Sitecore 6.6 - Setting up a Lucene index

Question

I'm working on learning how to setup and configure a Lucene search index for Sitecore 6.6. I've pieced together a base config file that indexes all items that are of type "Article" template starting at my desired location in the tree and am able to pull all the items out of that index and display the name from the results.

Now I'm ready to customize that index. I need to specifically index two fields and I am having trouble with the config syntax. Here's the breakdown of the two fields. I'm hoping someone can assist me with tweaking the configuration to account for these fields.

Meta Keywords - This field (single line text) is not part of the Article template but is pulled in from another template called Meta Base which Article inherits from. I do not need to store this, only index it for searching. ex. value "ortho, pain, joint"

Category - This field is a droplink that points to an available list of category items in the tree. I do need to store this as well as index it so that I can use it on the results page that will be searching/displaying these Lucene documents.

I can't seem to find the right documentation for 6.6. Docs for 7+ exist but they won't work in 6.6 because things seem to have changed significantly. Sitecore support directed me to some old docs that contained deprecated code as well as code that didn't compile, and everything else I've read seems to point to using Contrib Search (which I've pulled in via NuGet already). I'd like to get it working without the Contrib, but if I need to, I will.

Here is my config I created without the contrib stuff:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
<sitecore>
<search>
  <configuration>
    <indexes>
      <index id="my-custom-index" type="Sitecore.Search.Index, Sitecore.Kernel">
        <!-- name - not sure if necessary but use id and forget about it -->
        <param desc="name">$(id)</param>

        <!-- folder - name of directory on the hard drive -->
        <param desc="folder">__my-custom-index</param>

        <!-- analyzer - reference to analyzer defined in Sitecore.config -->
        <Analyzer ref="search/analyzer" />

        <!-- list of locations to index - each of the with unique xml tag -->
        <locations hint="list:AddCrawler">

          <!-- first location (and the only one in this case) - specific folder from you question -->
          <!-- type attribute is the crawler type - use default one in this scenario -->
          <specificfolder type="Sitecore.Search.Crawlers.DatabaseCrawler,Sitecore.Kernel">

            <!-- indexing items from web database -->
            <Database>web</Database>

            <!-- your folder path -->
            <Root>/sitecore/content/Northwestern/in-care</Root>

            <!-- Article Template -->
            <include hint="list:IncludeTemplate">
              <ContentHubArticle>{1E79E463-631A-4FBB-BEEA-3304D25F29CD}</ContentHubArticle>
            </include>

            <indexAllFields>true</indexAllFields>
          </specificfolder>
        </locations>



      </index>
    </indexes>
  </configuration>
</search>

For the time being, I've actually disabled the SearchContrib index and am determined to get the out-of-the-box index working. I've installed the indexviewer module and I'm able to see that all the fields are getting indexed due to the <indexAllFields>true</indexAllFields> setting, though they aren't getting stored, only indexed. I'd like to disable that setting and only index the two fields mentioned above, storing the droplink value as mentioned. I suspect the droplink one will be more difficult and will need custom code, so I'm starting with the single-line textbox first. — tjans
Check 3 blog posts below. They should answer all your questions: cognifide.com/blogs/sitecore/… cognifide.com/blogs/sitecore/… cognifide.com/blogs/sitecore/… — Marek Musielak
Marek, was there another link you intended to post? The last two are dupes of each other. Also, I've gone through both of those and they both got me to where I'm at now, but do not offer solutions on how to specify specific fields to index and how to configure whether to store them or just index them, nor do they offer solutions on how to handle droplink fields. — tjans
Heh sorry, here is the right one (I hope ;) ) cognifide.com/blogs/sitecore/… — Marek Musielak

Marek Musielak Marek Musielak · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-20T14:58:55

The most basic setup of Sitecore 6 lucene index is:

<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
 <sitecore>
  <search>
   <configuration>
    <indexes>
     <index id="custom-index" type="Sitecore.Search.Index, Sitecore.Kernel">
      <!-- name of the index displayed in the Sitecore Control Panel -->
      <param desc="name">Custom Index</param>
      <!-- folder in which index file will be stored -->
      <param desc="folder">__$(id)</param>
      <!-- reference to the analyzer defined in Sitecore config -->
      <Analyzer ref="search/analyzer" />
      <!-- list of locations which will be index by our index -->
      <locations hint="list:AddCrawler">
       <!-- our first and only location crawled by standard Sitecore crawler -->
       <custom-loc-1 type="Sitecore.Search.Crawlers.DatabaseCrawler,Sitecore.Kernel">
        <!-- location root is Home item in master database -->
        <Database>master</Database>
        <Root>/sitecore/content/Home</Root>
       </custom-loc-1>
      </locations>  
     </index>
    </indexes>
   </configuration>
  </search>
 </sitecore>
</configuration>

For custom fields you need to create a custom crawler class, e.g.:

public class MyCrawler : Sitecore.Search.Crawlers.DatabaseCrawler
{
  protected override void
    AddAllFields(Document document, Item item, bool versionSpecific)
  {
    base.AddAllFields(document, item, versionSpecific);

    document.Add(CreateField("my_title", item["title"], false, 1));

    WorkflowState state = item.State.GetWorkflowState();
    document.Add(CreateField("my_final_state", 
        state != null && state.FinalState ? "1" : "", false, 1));

    document.Add(CreateDataField("data_title", item["title"]));
  }
}

and register this crawler class like that:

<locations hint="list:AddCrawler">
  <custom-location-1 type="My.Assembly.Namespace.MyCrawler,My.Assembly">
  <Database>master</Database>
  <Root>/sitecore/content/Home</Root>
  </custom-location-1>
</locations>

Here are blog posts which you can use to learn more about Sitecore 6 search:

Sitecore 6.6 - Setting up a Lucene index

2 Answers