Getting started with Solr and Spring Boot

Solr is scalable, reliable and resilient service providing distributed indexing, replication and load-balanced queriesalong with a centralized configuration for its management. In this tutorial we will learn the basic of setting up Solr and create indexed documents using a Spring Boot application.

The simplest way to start Solr is using Docker:

$ docker run --name my_solr -d -p 8983:8983 -t solr 

That will create a new Docker container using the official Solr image, which includes OpenJDK+Solr.

To use Solr, you need to create a “core”, an index for your data. For example:

$ docker exec -it --user=solr my_solr bin/solr create_core -c customer_core Created new core 'customer_core' 

Now let’s code with Spring Boot. We need a class that will be stored

package com.masterspringboot.solrdemo;
import org.springframework.data.annotation.Id;
import org.springframework.data.solr.core.mapping.Indexed;
import org.springframework.data.solr.core.mapping.SolrDocument;
@SolrDocument(solrCoreName = "customer_core") public class CustomerDoc {
  @Id @Indexed private String id;
  @Indexed(name = "username", type = "string") private String username;
  @Indexed(name = "address", type = "string") private String address;
  @Indexed(name = "phone_number", type = "string") private String phoneNumber;
  // Getters and Setters here   
}

Then, our Repository Class which links to our Core:

package com.masterspringboot.solrdemo;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Qualifier;
import org.springframework.data.solr.repository.Query;
import org.springframework.data.solr.repository.SolrCrudRepository;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;
import java.util.List;

@Repository
@Qualifier("userSolrRepo")
public interface SolrRepository extends SolrCrudRepository<CustomerDoc, String> {
  @Query(value = "*:*")
  List<CustomerDoc> getCustomers();
}

The Repository is used by the following Service Class:

package com.masterspringboot.solrdemo;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
import java.util.List;

@Service
public class CustomerServiceImpl implements CustomerService {
  @Autowired SolrRepository userSolrRepo;

  @Override
  public void storeUser(CustomerDoc doc) {
    userSolrRepo.save(doc);
  }

  @Override
  public List<CustomerDoc> getCustomers() {
    return userSolrRepo.getCustomers();
  }

  @Override
  public void deleteCustomer(String id) {
    userSolrRepo.deleteById(id);
  }
}

And, at the top of the pile, we have the Controller class:

package com.masterspringboot.solrdemo;

import java.util.List;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.*;

@RestController
public class CustomerController {
  @Autowired private CustomerService customerService;

  @RequestMapping(value = "getCustomers", method = RequestMethod.GET)
  @ResponseBody
  public List<CustomerDoc> getCustomers() {
    return customerService.getCustomers();
  }

  @RequestMapping(
      value = "createCustomer",
      method = RequestMethod.POST,
      consumes = "application/json")
  @ResponseBody
  public String createCustomer(@RequestBody CustomerDoc doc) {
    customerService.storeUser(doc);
    return "Added Customer!";
  }

  @RequestMapping(value = "deleteCustomer", method = RequestMethod.DELETE)
  @ResponseBody
  public void deleteCustomer(@RequestParam String id) {
    customerService.deleteCustomer(id);
  }
}

An application class has been added for the purpose of starting the application:

package com.masterspringboot.solrdemo;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class DemoApplication {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
  }
}

That’s all. In terms of dependency, you need to add the following one, in order to be able to build the example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><project>
   <dependency>
          
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
          
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-solr</artifactId>
       
   </dependency>
    
</project>

You can run the application with:

mvn install spring-boot:run 

Then you can add a Customer using the POST method of the Controller:

curl -d '{"id":"1", "username":"John Smith", "address":"Park Avenue", "phoneNumber":"1234567"}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST http://localhost:8080/createCustomer 

You can check the customer list as follows:

curl http://localhost:8080/getCustomers 

Which will return:

[      {         "id": "1",         "username": "John Smith",         "address": "Park Avenue",         "phoneNumber": "1234567"     }  ] 

You can check Solr management console of  by browsing into its Admin Console at: http://localhost:8983/

And here is your Document, contained in the “customer_core”:

Congrats! You have just managed to set up Solr and deployed some Documents in it using a Spring Boot application.

Source code available here: https://github.com/fmarchioni/masterspringboot/tree/master/solr/demo-solr

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