Query a specific index value in a multivalue field in Solr

Question

So I have the following multifields in my Solr docs (just an example).

"type": [
    "Single",
    "Series",
    "Other association"
],
"name": [
    "Name associated with first type",
    "Name associated with second type",
    "Name associated with third type"
]

I'm to be able to query both fields with:

name:"Name associated with third type" AND type:"Series"

But I need to query the value of name and also match the type value in the same array index. So the above example should not hit because "Name associated with third type" is third name and "Series" is second in type.

A query that should produce a hit would be this, because both values are in the same array index.

name:"Name associated with second type" AND type:"Series"

But this matches everything. I hope this was properly explained. I don't even know if this is possible.

Answer 1

No, not possible to match across two multi-valued fields with the same index. You will need to get all the docs that match and deal with them in the client side.

However, if you will always have the full values for both type and name then you can alter your schema and make it work like this.

Define a new field called type_names which is a multi-valued string field. Modify your indexer to set values in that field like

type_names: [Single#Name associated with first type,
             Series#Name associated with second type,
             Other association#Name associated with third type]

I am using # but you can use any delimiter string that works for you.

(You may want to lower case everything in your index if you want case-insensitive matching and also lower-case your query values.)

Then query this field like:

type_names:(Series#Name associated with second type)

If it so happens that you know the full value for type but only one word in name (say second), then you can use regex match:

type_names:/Series#.*second.*/