Solr - Query over all fields best practice

Question

schema.xml snippet:

   <field name="id" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" />
   <field name="notes" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
   <field name="missionFocus" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
   <field name="name" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
   <field name="first_name" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
   <field name="last_name" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
   <field name="about_me" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
   <field name="message" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
   <field name="title" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="true"/>  
   <field name="table_type" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true"/>  

   <field name="text" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="false" 
          multiValued="true"/>

Now I want to search in all fields (except "id" and "table_type") for e.g. "hello". How I can do this? Do I really have to write following?

/solr/select/?q=notes:hello missionFocus:hello name:hello first_name:hello ..

I heard something about DisMaxRequestHandler but how I have to query with this handler? Do I need to change something in solrconfig.xml for that?

Answer 1

The best solution is to build a field, that collects the data of all fields like this

<field 
    name="collector" 
    type="text_general" 
    indexed="true" 
    stored="false" 
    multiValued="true"
/>

The only thing you have to do now is, copy the contents of all fields into that field:

<copyField source="notes"        dest="collector"/>
<copyField source="missionFocus" dest="collector"/>
<copyField source="name"         dest="collector"/>
....

Be aware that the copyField block has to be defined BELOW this:

<fields>
....
</fields>

Now you can search only on the field collector and you will find any text in any of your fields.