Solr - {!ex} on a facet query

Question

Background

I'm trying to combine 2 features that work great separately but having trouble making them work together.

*1) As documented on solr wiki I can tag a specific fq and then exclude it on my facet.field. That will make my facets' counts stay the same even when selecting a value, like this:

fq={!tag=pt}price:100&facet=true&facet.field={!ex=pt}price

*2) I want to use facet.query as follows:

facet=true&facet.query=price:[0 TO 100]&facet.query=price:[100 TO *]

So I want to combine *1 & *2, this is what I tried:

fq={!tag=pt}price:[0 to 100]&facet=true&facet.query={!ex=pt}price:[0 TO 100]&facet.query={!ex=pt}price:[100 TO *]

What actually happens is that I receive back from Solr:

<lst name="facet_queries">
    <int name="{!ex=pt}price:[0 TO 100]">8</int>
    <int name="{!ex=pt}price:[100 TO *]">19</int>
</lst>

My question is:

Why is the {!ex=pt} part of the name? It's messing up some of my logic. Maybe I misused it, if so then what's the right way?

More information

What I am expecting is this: (The same as I receive if running *2 without *1)

<lst name="facet_queries">
    <int name="price:[0 TO 100]">8</int>
    <int name="price:[100 TO *]">19</int>
</lst>

Which makes sense, since if I'm running *1 this is what I'm receiving in facet_fields:

<lst name="facet_fields">
    <lst name="price">
        <int name="80">8</int>
        <int name="150">19</int>
    </lst>
</lst>

It doesn't say name="{!ex=pt}price"

Answer 1

I assume this is because:

• *1 example uses facet.field which should be named the same way as the field it uses (without any excludes information).
• *2 example uses facet.query which should represent the query (with all possible information used in the query... it would not make sense to display part of query, e.g. without excludes part)

---

Anyway, if there is a need to name the particular facet which uses exclude functionality, then it can be done in the following way(using key parameter):

facet.field={!ex=pt key=good_name_for_a_facet}price

The same workds for facet.query... E.g., if you do want to hide the ex part:

facet.query={!ex=pt key=$queryOne}price:[0 TO 100]

where queryOne is part of a raw parameter passed to solr as queryOne=price:[0 TO 100]

So the final query will look something like this:

fq={!tag=pt}price:[0 TO 100]&facet=true&facet.query={!ex=pt key=$queryOne}price:[0 TO 100]&facet.query={!ex=pt key=$queryTwo}price:[100 TO *]&queryOne=price:[0 TO 100]&queryTwo=price:[100 TO *]

---

P.s. I have used the external parameter for key, because in that way - there is not need to do manual escaping of the special characters.

Answer 2

I ran into this issue, and I solved it by adding a local param key to the {!ex} param. So for your example, I would do:

fq={!tag=pt}price:[0 to 100]&facet=true&facet.query={!ex=pt key="0 TO 100"}price:[0 TO 100]&facet.query={!ex=pt key="100 TO *"}price:[100 TO *]

The reason for this is QueryFacet is treated differently from FieldFacet (facet.field vs facet.query). Solr only removes the local param, which is the {!ex …} in FieldFacet keys. I actually tracked it down to the code for this as you can see in line 680 in FacetComponent.java (v 4.6) from the link below:

http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/lucene/dev/tags/lucene_solr_4_6_0/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/component/FacetComponent.java?view=markup

I didn't further follow the issue because my use case requires a "pretty" key anyway :)

Answer 3

Here's how I solved it:

for (int i = 0; i < facetQueries.size(); i++) {
    String value = facetQueries.get(i);
    query.addFacetQuery(String.format("{!ex=%s key=$fQValue_%s}%s", value, i, value));
    query.add(String.format("fQValue_%s", i), value);
}