I used the Highlight approach because the facet.prefix one is too heavy for big index, and the other ones had few or unclear documentation (i'm a stupid programmer)
So let's suppose the user has just typed "aaa bbb ccc"
Our autocomplete function (java/javascript) will call solr using the following params
q="aaa bbb"~100 ...base query, all the typed words except the last
fq=ccc* ...suggest word filter using last typed word
hl=true
hl.q=ccc* ...highlight word will be the one to suggest
fl=NONE ...return empty docs in result tag
hl.pre=### ...escape chars to locate highlight word in the response
hl.post=### ...see above
you can also control the number of suggestion with 'rows' and 'hl.fragsize' parameters
the highlight words in each document will be the right candidates for the suggestion with "aaa bbb" string
more suggestion words are the ones before/after the highlight words and, of course, you can implement more filters to extract valid words, avoid duplicates, limit suggestions
if interested i can send you some examples...
EDITED: Some further details about the approach
The portion of example i give supposes the 'autocomplete' mechanism given by jquery: we invoke a jsp (or a servlet) inside a web application passing as request param 'q' the words just typed by user.
This is the code of the jsp
ByteArrayInputStream is=null; // Used to manage Solr response
try{
StringBuffer queryUrl=new StringBuffer('putHereTheUrlOfSolrServer');
queryUrl.append("/select?wt=xml");
String typedWords=request.getParameter("q");
String base="";
if(typedWords.indexOf(" ")<=0) {
// No space typed by user: the 'easy case'
queryUrl.append("&q=text:");
queryUrl.append(URLEncoder.encode(typedWords+"*", "UTF-8"));
queryUrl.append("&hl.q=text:"+URLEncoder.encode(typedWords+"*", "UTF-8"));
} else {
// Space chars present
// we split the search in base phrase and last typed word
base=typedWords.substring(0,typedWords.lastIndexOf(" "));
queryUrl.append("&q=text:");
if(base.indexOf(" ")>0)
queryUrl.append("\""+URLEncoder.encode(base, "UTF-8")+"\"~1000");
else
queryUrl.append(URLEncoder.encode(base, "UTF-8"));
typedWords=typedWords.substring(typedWords.lastIndexOf(" ")+1);
queryUrl.append("&fq=text:"+URLEncoder.encode(typedWords+"*", "UTF-8"));
queryUrl.append("&hl.q=text:"+URLEncoder.encode(typedWords+"*", "UTF-8"));
}
// The additional parameters to control the solr response
queryUrl.append("&rows="+suggestPageSize); // Number of results returned, a parameter to control the number of suggestions
queryUrl.append("&fl=A_FIELD_NAME_THAT_DOES_NOT_EXIST"); // Interested only in highlights section, Solr return a 'light' answer
queryUrl.append("&start=0"); // Use only first page of results
queryUrl.append("&hl=true"); // Enable highlights feature
queryUrl.append("&hl.simple.pre=***"); // Use *** as 'highlight border'
queryUrl.append("&hl.simple.post=***"); // Use *** as 'highlight border'
queryUrl.append("&hl.fragsize="+suggestFragSize); // Another parameter to control the number of suggestions
queryUrl.append("&hl.fl=content,title"); // Look for result only in some fields
queryUrl.append("&facet=false"); // Disable facets
/* Omitted section: use a new URL(queryUrl.toString()) to get the solr response inside a byte array */
is=new ByteArrayInputStream(solrResponseByteArray);
DocumentBuilderFactory dbFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder dBuilder = dbFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = dBuilder.parse(is);
XPathFactory xPathfactory = XPathFactory.newInstance();
XPath xpath = xPathfactory.newXPath();
XPathExpression expr = xpath.compile("//response/lst[@name=\"highlighting\"]/lst/arr[@name=\"content\"]/str");
NodeList valueList = (NodeList) expr.evaluate(doc, XPathConstants.NODESET);
Vector<String> suggestions=new Vector<String>();
for (int j = 0; j < valueList.getLength(); ++j) {
Element value = (Element) valueList.item(j);
String[] result=value.getTextContent().split("\\*\\*\\*");
for(int k=0;k<result.length;k++){
String suggestedWord=result[k].toLowerCase();
if((k%2)!=0){
//Highlighted words management
if(suggestedWord.length()>=suggestedWord.length() && !suggestions.contains(suggestedWord))
suggestions.add(suggestedWord);
}else{
/* Words before/after highlighted words
we can put these words inside another vector
and use them if not enough suggestions */
}
}
}
/* Finally we build a Json Answer to be managed by our jquery function */
out.print(request.getParameter("json.wrf")+"({ \"suggestions\" : [");
boolean firstSugg=true;
for(String suggestionW:suggestions) {
out.print((firstSugg?" ":" ,"));
out.print("{ \"suggest\" : \"");
if(base.length()>0) {
out.print(base);
out.print(" ");
}
out.print(suggestionW+"\" }");
firstSugg=false;
}
out.print(" ]})");
}catch (Exception x) {
System.err.println("Exception during main process: " + x);
x.printStackTrace();
}finally{
//Gracefully close streams//
try{is.close();}catch(Exception x){;}
}
Hope to be helpfull,
Nik
