How to link Sitecore Content Editor to a custom Solr search index configured for a certain Data Template?

Question

I have created a custom Solr search index for a specific Data Template as I expect to maintain tons of items created based on that template. As you would guess I organised my items into Sitecore Item Buckets for better performance and also I could configure my Sitecore front-end to utilise that custom Solr search index. Now I would like to optimise the search across my Item Buckets in Content Editor, but it seems that Sitecore takes the master index over any custom indexes. How can I configure Sitecore to use my custom index?

Answer 1

Once you have created your custom Solr index you should also have created a corresponding config file as per one of the example files provided by Sitecore. For instance, for Master DB you can use Sitecore.ContentSearch.Solr.Index.Master.config.example as a config template and simply add a patch:before="*[1]" attribute to your custom index definition as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <contentSearch>
      <configuration type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.ContentSearchConfiguration, Sitecore.ContentSearch">
        <indexes hint="list:AddIndex">
          <index patch:before="*[1]" id="my_sitecore_custom_master_index" type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider.SolrSearchIndex, Sitecore.ContentSearch.SolrProvider">
            <param desc="name">$(id)</param>
            <param desc="core">$(id)</param>
            <param desc="propertyStore" ref="contentSearch/indexConfigurations/databasePropertyStore" param1="$(id)" />
            <configuration ref="contentSearch/indexConfigurations/defaultSolrIndexConfiguration" />
            <strategies hint="list:AddStrategy">
              <strategy ref="contentSearch/indexConfigurations/indexUpdateStrategies/syncMaster" />
            </strategies>
            <locations hint="list:AddCrawler">
              <crawler type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.SitecoreItemCrawler, Sitecore.ContentSearch">
                <Database>master</Database>
                <Root>/sitecore</Root>
              </crawler>
            </locations>
            <enableItemLanguageFallback>false</enableItemLanguageFallback>
            <enableFieldLanguageFallback>false</enableFieldLanguageFallback>
          </index>
        </indexes>
      </configuration>
    </contentSearch>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

Now Sitecore will load my_sitecore_custom_master_index index configuration as first priority and utilise it while processing any search queries for your custom items instead of the default Sitecore one.