Solr TextField to Java #Field Mapping - solr

Question

I am using Solr 5.2.1 (Simple stand alone instance on dev PC) and Running Solrj in a Spring Application.
I have everything working fine (Solrj Client is able to commit and retrieve the domain Model which has been annotated with #Field annotations) however I wanted to use free text search on one of the domain model's fields so I changed its type from String to a Text Field, my understanding is this will allow a more free text approach to the search instead of key:value pair type searches where solr give all or nothing back.
schema.xml snippet
<field name="description" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
Java bean snippet
public String getDescription() {
return description;
}
#Field
public void setDescription(String description) {
this.description = description;
}
The Save side worked fine, I am able to update solr vai the java bean ans solrj and using the http client I can see the data goes in, the problem I have is I can't seem to get the java bean back out when querying. Solr does not like the String based setter when it tries to populate the bean. I get the following error:
Caused by: org.apache.solr.client.solrj.beans.BindingException: Exception while setting value : [PetShop] on public void search.CompanySummarySolr.setDescription(java.lang.String)
INFO [stdout] (http-localhost-127.0.0.1-8080-6) at org.apache.solr.client.solrj.beans.DocumentObjectBinder$DocField.set(DocumentObjectBinder.java:447)
INFO [stdout] (http-localhost-127.0.0.1-8080-6) at org.apache.solr.client.solrj.beans.DocumentObjectBinder$DocField.inject(DocumentObjectBinder.java:430)
INFO [stdout] (http-localhost-127.0.0.1-8080-6) at org.apache.solr.client.solrj.beans.DocumentObjectBinder.getBean(DocumentObjectBinder.java:64)
INFO [stdout] (http-localhost-127.0.0.1-8080-6) ... 64 more
INFO [stdout] (http-localhost-127.0.0.1-8080-6) Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: argument type mismatch
I understand the error, I just can't find out how one would map the Text Field. In the http client the Json output it looks like an Array, but in the Solr API http://lucene.apache.org/solr/5_2_0/solr-core/org/apache/solr/schema/TextField.html it extends Object not an Array.
All I can see is I need do ether have the field as
#Field
public void setDescription(Object description) {
this.description = (???) description;
}
In which case how do I get it back to a String?
Or I can use the org.apache.solr.schema.TextField
#Field
public void setDescription(TextField description) {
this.description = description.getValueSource(???, ???);
}
But I also don't really understand how to get the String back out for starters, and secondly it looks like I have to pull in the whole solr library into the project, as the TextField object is not in the Solrj library.
I am sure I have missed something, all the other fields map so simply, but I cant find an example of how to get description back to the client as a String and also allow a free text search on this field, as Strings don't allow that type of search as far as I understand.
Any help gladly appreciated

Answer 1

So it would appear Solr defaults TextField to a multi valued field. This means that Solr wraps the String field I passed in with an Array, which causes the Bean Setter to break as Solr wants to return an Array with 1 String instead of a String.
To fix this simply edit your Schema.xml file and explicitly tell Solr text_general is a Single Value, so in my case the description field went
From this:
<field name="description" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
To This:
<field name="description" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true" multiValued="false"/>
Now Solr happily converts my response into its component java bean.