Integrating Solr for Asp.net MVC 3.. Solrnet or Ajax-Solr

Question

I'm working on e-commerce site containing 200 000 products spread across 2 000 categories/sub categories with having a filters applied on its attributes per category, like brand, price range, features, etc.

The site is built up on nop commerce, asp.net mvc 3.0 with sql 2008.

Now I'm planning to implement Solr for Faceted Product Search and category pages with filtering.

What is the best approach should I use Ajax method for querying results from Solr using ajax-solr or implement it using solrnet? What is more responsive on client site? And what is fast to implement?

My goal is to implement it in most simplest way with search first and then later implement it for category pages.

I've reviewed the code and example available on solrnet, but still not very much clear as what does it integrate into it.

i dont know about the ajax-solr stuff but if i were you i would have used solrnet (as i only know of it) and then leverage the web api to return the results in json format, on the client side you can make ajax calls and manipulate the results as per your wish — John x

Peaeater Peaeater · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-07T16:02:06

I would recommend solrnet. It will integrate nicely into an ASP.NET MVC 3 environment and will allow you to leverage dependency injection, unit testing, logging, debug capability, and all those good things that make for a better development experience and a better application in the long run.

I have personally used solrnet with ASP.NET MVC 3 and can attest to its performance as well as its utility. You can also find good answers on stackoverflow if you have any issues; the creator of solrnet, Mauricio, answers many posts personally.

I have used ajax-solr, but found immediately it was really only useful as a slap-dash means of getting a solr demo site up and running in a few hours. No offense to the creators of ajax-solr, but if you have .NET MVC at your disposal, solrnet is the clear choice.

The sample MVC project that comes with solrnet is a useful place to start, though it's not MVC 3.

Integrating Solr for Asp.net MVC 3.. Solrnet or Ajax-Solr

2 Answers