Global search

Installation

To use Solr as Moodle's search engine you need the PHP Solr extension and a Solr server.

PHP Solr extension

You need PHP Solr extension installed. Use PECL Solr Extension 1.x for Solr Server 3.x, or use PECL Solr 2.x for Solr Server 4.0+.

You can download the official latest versions from [1](http://pecl.php.net/package/solr)

Basic installation steps (using apache web server):

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

   sudo apt-get install libpcre3-dev libxml2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev
   sudo apt-get install php5-dev
   sudo apt-get install php-pear
   sudo pecl install solr
   sudo service apache2 restart
   sudo sh -c "echo 'extension=solr.so' > /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/solr.ini"
   sudo sh -c "echo 'extension=solr.so' > /etc/php5/cli/conf.d/solr.ini"

OSX using macports

   sudo port install apache-solr4
   sudo port install php54-solr

Windows

Install the pecl package as usual. Sorry it has not been tested yet.

Solr server

The following snippet (feel free to copy & paste into a .sh script with execution permissions) will download Solr 5.4.1 in the current directory, start the solr server and create an index in it named moodle to add moodle data to it.

   #!/bin/bash
   set -e
   SOLRVERSION=5.4.1
   SOLRNAME=solr-$SOLRVERSION
   SOLRTAR=$SOLRNAME'.tgz'
   INDEXNAME=moodle
   if [ -d $SOLRNAME ]; then
       echo "Error: Directory $SOLRNAME already exists, remove it before starting the setup again."
       exit 1
   fi
   if [ ! -f $SOLRTAR ]; then
       wget http://apache.mirror.digitalpacific.com.au/lucene/solr/$SOLRVERSION/$SOLRTAR
   fi
   tar -xvzf $SOLRTAR
   cd $SOLRNAME
   bin/solr start
   bin/solr create -c $INDEXNAME
   # After setting it up and creating the index use:
   # - "/yourdirectory/solrdir/bin/solr start" from CLI to start the server
   # - "/yourdirectory/solrdir/bin/solr stop" from CLI to stop the server.

Setup

1. Go to Site administration -> Plugins -> Search -> Manage global search
2. Follow Search setup steps to complete the setup process. Basically you have to:
   1. Enable global search
   2. Set Solr as search engine and tick all search areas checkboxes
   3. Go to Site administration -> Plugins -> Search -> Solr and set Host name to localhost, Port to 8983 and Index name to 'moodle' (the name of the index in Solr)

Indexing

Once global search is enabled a new task will be running through cron, although you can force documents indexing by:

1. Going to Reports -> Global search info
2. Tick Index all site contents and press Execute

or

• Executing the following task from CLI

   php admin/tool/task/cli/schedule_task.php --execute="\\core\\task\\search_index_task"

Querying

1. Hover the search icon in the navigation bar, type your query and press Enter

or

1. Add Global search block somewhere
2. Type your query and press Search