Sitecore 8.1 computed index field for image only indexing alt text on solr

Question

Ran into this issue the other day but can't find anything yet (from googling) that addresses this issue.

I am using Solr as my indexing engine. I am trying to index a image field in my template. Indexing is working fine but it's not indexing the media URL (that I am returning from my code) instead it's indexing the ALT text of the image. If the ALT text is not present only then it's indexing the media URL. I have my index configuration in a separate file.

I think the below line in the default Sitecore.ContentSearch.Solr.DefaultIndexConfiguration.config file is probably messing with my config. But how do I overwrite this only for "main_image" field.

<fieldReader fieldTypeName="image" fieldReaderType="Sitecore.ContentSearch.FieldReaders.ImageFieldReader, Sitecore.ContentSearch" />

Below is how my configuration looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration xmlns:patch="http://www.sitecore.net/xmlconfig/">
  <sitecore>
    <myindex>
      <indexConfigurations>
        <mySolrIndexConfiguration ref="contentSearch/indexConfigurations/defaultSolrIndexConfiguration">
            <fields hint="raw:AddComputedIndexField">
                <field fieldName="main_image" returnType="text">My.Indexing.Namespace.MyMainImageIndexing,My.Indexing</field>
                <field fieldName="thumbnail" returnType="text">My.Indexing.Namespace.MyThumbnailIndexing,My.Indexing</field>
            </fields>
        </mySolrIndexConfiguration>
      </indexConfigurations>
    </myindex>
  </sitecore>
</configuration>

One of the implementations looks like below (the other one is similar)

public class MyMainImageIndexing : IComputedIndexField
{
    public string Parameters { get; set; }
    public string FieldName { get; set; }
    public string ReturnType { get; set; }

    public object ComputeFieldValue(IIndexable indexable)
    {
        Assert.ArgumentNotNull(indexable, "indexable");
        var indexableItem = indexable as SitecoreIndexableItem;

        if (indexableItem == null)
        {
            Log.Warn(string.Format("{0} : unsupported IIndexable type : {1}", this, indexable.GetType()), this);
            return null;
        }

        ImageField img = indexableItem.Item.Fields["Main Image"];

        return (img == null || img.MediaItem == null) ? null : MediaManager.GetMediaUrl(img.MediaItem);
    }
}

Could anyone please shed some light here on how to resolve this issue.

Thanks in advance.

P.S> I have seen John West's post here http://www.sitecore.net/de-de/learn/blogs/technical-blogs/john-west-sitecore-blog/posts/2013/05/sitecore-7-pre-render-image-fields.aspx

Marek Musielak Marek Musielak · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-07T07:48:00

Your code looks completely fine. You have a bug in your configuration.

You set returnType of your fields to text which means that Solr will tokenize those fields. It means that Solr won't keep the values as a one string, instead it will create tokens which would allow full text search in the future.

You should change your configuration to

<field fieldName="main_image" returnType="string">...

After you reindex, Solr will keep the whole value as a single string.

Also you should be aware that if you rename a media item, Solr will have outdated urls and it will not rebuild all the referencing documents automatically.

Sitecore 8.1 computed index field for image only indexing alt text on solr

1 Answers