[TYPO3-Solr] [Announce] EXT:solr v2.2.0 released

[Ingo Renner]

Hi all,

I'm happy to announce the release of EXT:solr version 2.2.0 and 2.7.0-EAP.

This release brings improvements for the Index Queue, new facet types, 
OpenSearch support, performance improvements, and general bug fixes. 
Many of the new features and other changes were developed while 
integrating EXT:solr for typo3.org.


New in this release

General Changes:
* The HTTP GET parameter for the user's query is now freely 
configurable. Instead of using the default tx_solr[q], you can now also 
just a more simple q for example. This change makes it easier to analyze 
the user's search behavior using tools like Piwik.
* Solr connections can now be initialized per site through a new entry 
in the page tree's click menu. This should be a relieve for large 
installations with many sites where the Solr connection initialization 
could run into a PHP execution time limit.
* Solr connections can now also be initialized through TYPO3's command 
line interface (CLI) which should be very much appreciated for 
Continuous Integration and Deployment scenarios.
* The checks in TYPO3's system status report have once been improved 
making it even easier to detect issues in the extension's configuration.


Index Queue:
* Priorities for indexing configuration. It is now possible to set 
priorities for different indexing configurations, allowing to have 
products indexed before news articles before pages, or any other order.
* Index Queue indexing configurations can now be initialized 
selectively. Before you could just initialize the whole Index Queue, now 
you can just re-initialize f.e. news or products.
* A sorting field can now be configured for the SOLR_RELATION indexing 
configuration helper. This makes it easier to f.e. index just the main 
category of a news record instead of all categories.


Search and Faceting:
* Hierarchical facets now support the configuration options 
selectingSelectedFacetOptionRemovesFilter and singleOptionMode. When 
building menus from hierarchical facets, the ACT state is supported, 
too. Hierarchical facets are a feature exclusive to the extension's 
early access program (EAP).
* Sites to be searched can now be easily configured, which allows to 
index multiple sites into one index and search different or multiple 
sites depending from where a user starts its search request.
* Support for OpenSearch has been added, allowing a user to start a 
search on your site from his browser's search input field.
* Conditional Facets: It's now possible to define requirements for a 
facet that must be fulfilled before the facet is being rendered. For 
example a category facet may only be rendered if the user has selected 
news from the type facet.
* Query Facets: Instead of creating a facet's options from an index 
field's values it is now possible to create a facet's options from the 
results of several queries.
* The spell checker (did you mean ...) can now use the suggestions to 
show the actual results instead of making the user search for the 
suggestions, creating a better experience for the user by saving time 
and additional page requests.


Minor Changes and Notable Bug Fixes:
* RealURL did not create URLs when indexing records
* Garbage Collector does not wait for Solr's commit to complete anymore. 
Previously, when an editor caused the Garbage Collector to clean up 
documents from the index, by for example deleting or hiding a record, 
that action could take a while before the editor could continue working 
in the TYPO3 backend. The Garbage Collector now returns immediately so 
that the editor does not need to wait anymore.
* Performance of the template engine has been improved. Depending on the 
complexity of a template this can speed up result page rendering by a 
factor of four to five times.
* New template markers have been added related to faceting


Other Changes:
* The public version on forge has been migrated to the git and Gerrit 
infrastructure, making it even easier to contribute to the project.
* The default filter on the index' language field has been removed as it 
is recommended to separate languages into separate indexes.


Updating:
Updating should be strait forward. Simply update the extension, no need 
to update anything with the Solr server, and also no need to re-index 
your content.


Contributors:
(patches, comments, bug reports, ... no particular order)

Stefan Sprenger
Stefan Galinksi
Cornel Boppart
Steffen Ritter
Dimitri Ebert
Andre Westbunk
Jochem de Groot
Michel Tremblay
Rik Willems
Dirk Wenzel
Jigal van Hemert
Steffen Gebert
Peter Niederlag
Oliver Hader
Olivier Dobberkau
Peter Kraume
Axel Böswetter
Constantin Lebrecht
Frédéric Jaeger
Ingo Pfennigstorf
Christoph Moeller
Jari-Hermann Ernst
Marco Bresch
Marc Bastian Heinrichs
Tomas Norre Mikkelsen
Thorsten Kahler

Thanks to everyone who helped with this release!


All the best
Ingo

-- 
Ingo Renner
TYPO3 Core Developer, Release Manager TYPO3 4.2, Admin Google Summer of Code

TYPO3 - Open Source Enterprise Content Management System
http://typo3.org

Apache Solr for TYPO3 -
Open Source Enterprise Search meets Open Source Enterprise CMS
http://www.typo3-solr.com