Full-text Search Feature Support

We use Apache Solr to support full-text search features required by the application, such as searching for students and instructors.

Search service is optional for local development. It is perfectly fine to skip the setup described in this page if you are not working on search features.

This document will assume Solr version 8.11.1.

Setting up Solr using Docker

If you have access to Docker, this method is straightforward and recommended.

We have provided a Docker compose definition to run dependent services, including Solr. Run it under the solr service name and bind to the container port 8983:

docker compose run -p 8983:8983 solr

    

    


    
    

If the above command does not work, you may want to try this instead:

docker-compose run -p 8983:8983 solr

    

    


    
    

Verification: the Solr admin console should be accessible in http://localhost:8983.

Setting up Solr manually

You may notice that the setup steps in this method are a manual version of the Docker method.

1. Download and install Solr by following this guide.
2. To start the Solr server, navigate to the Solr root directory and run the following command:

   # The server listens to port 8983 by default.
   
   # Linux/MacOS
   bin/solr start
   
   # Windows
   bin\solr.cmd start
   
       
   
       
   
   
       
       

   Wait until the following message (or similar) is printed in the console:

   Started Solr server on port 8983 (pid=44665). Happy searching!
   
       
   
       
   
   
       
       

   Verification: the Solr admin console should be accessible in http://localhost:8983.
3. Run all the commands defined in the Solr startup script in the Solr root directory.