Auto Suggestion in Websphere Commerce Search

There are two types of auto suggestions.. 

1) Suggest keywords based on Search term.

2) Suggest actual Entity based on Search term.

The Auto-Suggestion feature is now handled via Search Rest calls in FEP8. Technically it is Term Search for Spellcheck fields. So the whole thing can be summarized as below mentioned steps:

/conf/solrconfig.xml

1. Configure request handler for /terms URL
2. Configure wc_textSuggest and wc_spellCheck configuration

/conf/schema.xml

1. Define SOLR fields that are too be shown as Auto Suggested keywords when searched for Terms
2. Define Spell check fields which are to be spell corrected for showing suggestions

SOLR Configuration Changes 

---

As auto suggested keywords are nothing but different Terms that are being Indexed at the time of commit, we need to define a handler in solrconfig.xml.

<!--

         WebSphere Commerce terms request handler

         This requestHandler can be used for search term auto-suggest.

-->

<requestHandler name="/terms" class="org.apache.solr.handler.component.SearchHandler">

    <lst name="defaults">

      <bool name="terms">true</bool>

      <str name="terms.fl">spellCheck</str>

      <str name="terms.limit">5</str>

      <str name="terms.mincount">1</str>

      <str name="terms.sort">count</str>

      <bool name="omitHeader">true</bool>

      <bool name="indent">false</bool>

      <str name="wt">json</str>

    </lst>

    <arr name="components">

      <str>wc_termsComponent</str>

    </arr>

</requestHandler>

SOLR Schema Changes

---

SOLR Field Type Configurations

We need to ensure that required field types are configured in respective schema.xml

1. wc_textSuggest
2. spellCorrection
3. spellCheck

These configuration can be copied from OOTB CatalogEntry/CatalogGroup configuration.

Setup Verification

---

At this time we can verify if the SOLR cores are setup properly.

Once we have done the configuration, we can see if the designated fields are split properly by hitting /term url as below
http://localhost/solr/MC_10001_Shop_en_US/terms?terms.fl=city&terms.sort=index&terms.limit=15&terms.prefix=chem


terms.fl                     Designated Auto Suggestion type field
terms.limit                  Number of terms to return
terms.prefix                 Initials of search term.
The final SOLR query looks like as below 

http://localhost/solr/MC_10001_Shop_en_US/terms?qt=%2Fterms&terms.prefix=checm&terms.fl=spellCheck

And the response is :

{

  "terms":{

    "spellCheck":[

      "chemist",5,

      "chemist shop",2,

      "chemist shop new delhi",1,

      "india chemicals",1]}

}

Auto Suggesting Actual Entity

Apart from suggesting Search Keywords, we need to suggest actual Business Entity based on Search terms..This requires utilizing searchProfiles for different cores. For implementation details, refer Respective Core implementation.