Sitecore Spatial Search using Solr

Solr is a very powerful search provider that covers almost every feature that you would think of. Geographical search is one of the great features that Solr implemented really nicely by providing spatial indexes, query filters and sorting by distance. Unfortunately, the default Solr provider in Sitecore doesn’t utilise the spatial search feature in Solr. So, I’ve decided to build this small project to extend the existing provider. Thanks to @aokour86 (The author of the Sitecore spatial provider for Lucene) and to @herskinduk for their help and guidance.

Here is the installation guide and examples of how to use the extended provider.

Installation:

1. Download the “Solr Search Support” package from the market place.
2. Login to Sitecore (v 7.0+) and install the package via the “Installation Wizard”
3. At the last step of the installation wizard, choose to restart the Sitecore server.
4. Edit the /App_Config/Include/Sitecore.ContentSearch.Solr.Indexes.config to change the index type from
5. Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider.SolrSearchIndex, Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider to Sitecore.ContentSearch.Spatial.Solr.Provider.SolrSearchIndexWithSpatial, Sitecore.ContentSearch.Spatial.Solr on the master, web and core indexes. E.g the web index should look like
   <index id="sitecore_web_index" type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.Spatial.Solr.Provider.SolrSearchIndexWithSpatial, Sitecore.ContentSearch.Spatial.Solr"> ...</index>
6. Edit the Solr Schema.xml and add the following dynamic field
   <dynamicField name="*_rpt" type="location_rpt" indexed="true" stored="true" />

How to use:

1- Customising the Sitecore item templates

The Solr Search Support package will add a new custom Sitecore data type – LatLon to Sitecore. You can use this data type to add spatial support to any Sitecore template.

Adding a field of the LatLon custom data type will provide you with the following map-based interface to set the location of your items.

The map is interactive, so you can click on the map to populate the Latitude and Longitude values. Also, you can type the values in the text box above the map, and click on the “Refresh map” link to update the location on the map from the value you entered.

2- Writing spatial queries

After you have created some data, it’s time to write spatial queries to filter and sort the results. The package contains new extension functions that are handled using a custom IQueryable provider. Here is what you need to do:

Create a SearchResultItem custom class to map the GeoLocation field to a SpatialPoint type as follows:

public class CustomSearchResultItem : SearchResultItem
{
[IndexField("title")]
public string Title { get; set; }

[IndexField("body")]
public string Body { get; set; }

[IndexField("geolocation")]
public SpatialPoint Location { get; set; }
}

The SpatialPoint type is provided by the package, you will need to reference the \bin\Sitecore.ContentSearch.Spatial.DataTypes assembly.

In order to write spatial queries you will need first to reference the provided \bin\Sitecore.ContentSearch.Spatial.Solr assembly. The following code shows how to filter the results given a point and radius kilometers.

var indexName = string.Format("sitecore_{0}_index", Sitecore.Context.Database.Name);
var index = ContentSearchManager.GetIndex(indexName);
using (var context = index.CreateSearchContext())
{
  var query = context.GetQueryable<CustomSearchResultItem>();
  query = query.Where(i => i.Parent == new ID("{B05F6DDC-763C-4D12-8137-B40A81AED6D7}"));
  query = query.WithinRadius(i => i.Location, 51.44052675988403, -3.175048828125, 50);
  return query.GetResults();
}

and to sort by distance, you can use the following function:

query = query.OrderByNearest(); 

If you have any enquires please contact me on twitter @ehabelgindy.
The source code of the module is available at https://github.com/ehabelgindy/sitecore-solr-spatial, so if you can contribute to improve the module .. please do!

Thanks