Search suggestions in django-oscar using solr - solr

Question

I've setup a django-oscar project and enabled solr 4.7.2 on it as per documentation.
Solr seems to be working fine. Testing the suggestions for 'exxample' (localhost:8983/solr/collection1/spell?spellcheck.q=exxample&spellcheck=true>) I get:
<response>
<lst name="responseHeader">
<int name="status">0</int>
<int name="QTime">10</int>
</lst>
<result name="response" numFound="0" start="0"/>
<lst name="spellcheck">
<lst name="suggestions">
<lst name="exxampl">
<int name="numFound">1</int>
<int name="startOffset">0</int>
<int name="endOffset">8</int>
<int name="origFreq">0</int>
<arr name="suggestion">
<lst>
<str name="word">exampl</str>
<int name="freq">2</int>
</lst>
</arr>
</lst>
<bool name="correctlySpelled">false</bool>
<lst name="collation">
<str name="collationQuery">exampl</str>
<int name="hits">2</int>
<lst name="misspellingsAndCorrections">
<str name="exxampl">exampl</str>
</lst>
</lst>
</lst>
</lst>
</response>
I've also enabled OSCAR_SEARCH_FACETS to make sure that Solr has been correctly registered by Django-Oscar, and it seems to be working fine.
HOWEVER, when I do a test search for a simple misspelling in django-oscar, I get 0 returned search results and no suggestions. I'm not sure what to do next.
Help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

I've managed to fix this problem. I'll write my complete solution to setting up Solr with spelling suggestions on Django-Oscar since setup procedures require adjustments from that described in the official documentation. This is also my first time working with Solr (or any search engine), so don't expect some expert guidance, just a guide on how to get Solr up and running on Oscar.
I am using Oscar 1.5 with Solr 4.7.2 (solutions also works for 4.10.4 ... not sure about other versions). Do everything as per documentations - note that there is a slight difference in instructions for versions of Oscar that are < 1.5.
Once you have Solr installed and running you can test out an inquiry on the Solr server # localhost:8983/solr/collection1/spell?spellcheck.q=[your search inquiry goes here; no brackets]&spellcheck=true>. Needs to be a word from your database - either in product description or product title.
You will get an error result saying that Analyzer needs to be of same type. Fix this by editing the solrconfig.xml file located at ./solr-4.7.2/example/solr/collection1/conf/solrconfig.xml. Search for <str name="field">, and change each non-commented instance to <str name="field">text</str> - you can also change each instance to <str name="field">title</str>, but this restricts to words found in titles only. Restart the Solr server. These changes will do away with the Analyzer error and your Solr server will now start showing results, however they won't yet be fed into your Oscar site.
To fix this you need to make another adjustment to the same solrconfig.xml file. Search for <requestHandler name="/select" class="solr.SearchHandler">, and at the bottom of this request handler include the following code:
<arr name="last-components">
<str>spellcheck</str>
</arr>
Restart the server. Now you have spelling suggestions in your Oscar site. Hope others have found this helpful. Like I said - this is the first time I'm using Solr. If someone has anything to add, or extend Solr functionality on Oscar it would be great.