Apache Solr features in TYPO3: Data protection compliance with Hosted Solr
Nowadays, a powerful search function is a crucial factor for user satisfaction, conversion rates and operational efficiency. With the EXT:solr extension, you can seamlessly integrate a professional, scalable search solution into your existing TYPO3 infrastructure – thereby laying the foundations for a noticeably better performance of your digital platform.
In combination with Hosted Solr, you benefit from a search environment hosted in compliance with data protection regulations, which can be fully adapted to your business and technical requirements. From fine-grained relevance tuning and comprehensive filter and analysis functions to role-based access restrictions and user-friendly convenience features, you have all the tools at your disposal to consistently align your search strategy with your business objectives.
Which features are used in a specific project depends on your individual configuration and the defined purpose – a clear advantage for companies that value a needs-based, future-proof solution.
Apache Solr is one of the most powerful search solutions – Hosted Solr utilises this technology with a tailored selection of features for TYPO3. You can find an overview of all the features in our detailed Apache Solr feature list.
The following overview shows you the key features in detail and illustrates the potential that EXT:solr unlocks for your TYPO3 system.
AI Search / Vector Search Advanced search options Auto Suggest Boosting Content Elevation Faceted search & filters Front-end user group access restrictions Full-text search Geo-search Grouping High-performance search Metrics & aggregations Multilingual search & synonyms Pagination & “load more” Results highlighting Search in attachments Site Highlighting Sorting Spell check Stopword filtering Synonym Search Text and metadata extraction
AI Search / Vector Search
Vector search, as a form of AI search, does not only search for exact terms, but also for meanings that are similar in content. This allows search queries to be interpreted semantically and more relevant results to be found.
Auto Suggest
Auto Suggest displays relevant search suggestions as you type. This helps users find the right search query or go straight to the content they’re looking for more quickly. Optionally, Auto Suggest can also display the top results as suggestions or images with links.
Boosting
Boosting influences the relevance ranking of search results by giving greater weight to certain characteristics. This allows, for example, up-to-date, important or particularly relevant content to appear higher up in the results.
Content Elevation
Content Elevation allows specific content to be prioritised in the search results for defined search queries. This enables particularly important pages, promotions or information to be given prominence.
Faceted search & filters
Faceted search adds dynamic filters to the results list, for example by category, file type, time period or attributes. This allows even large sets of results to be narrowed down quickly and precisely.
Front-end User Group Access Restrictions
This feature ensures that only content for which a user actually has authorisation appears in search results. Protected pages or documents therefore remain invisible to unauthorised users.
Full-text search
The full-text search scans the entire content of web pages, records or documents, rather than just individual titles or keywords. This enables users to find relevant results even if the term they are searching for appears only in the body text.
Grouping
Grouping combines similar or related results into a single entry. This means that variants or duplicates are presented in a more compact way, and the results list remains clear and organised.
High-performance search
This feature ensures fast search results, even with large volumes of data. Optimised indexing and query processing guarantee high performance, which is particularly crucial when dealing with extensive content or high user traffic.
Metrics & Aggregations
Metrics and aggregations provide summarised values for search results, such as counts, averages or distributions. This allows results to be analysed directly within the search without having to export them.
Multilingual search
This feature allows users to search in multiple languages. It enables them to find content in different language versions without having to change the language manually.
Pagination & ‘Load more’
This feature controls how large sets of results are distributed across multiple pages or loaded incrementally. This improves clarity and ensures a user-friendly presentation of results.
Results Highlighting
Results Highlighting (Treffermarkierung) hebt Suchbegriffe direkt in der Trefferliste oder im Such-Snippet farblich hervor. Nutzer sehen dadurch sofort, warum ein Ergebnis zu ihrer Anfrage passt.
Sorting
Sorting determines the order in which search results are displayed, for example by relevance, date or alphabetically. This allows users to better tailor the results view to their current needs.
Spelling check
The spelling check detects potential typos in search queries and suggests appropriate corrections. This means that even an incorrect entry often still leads to useful results.
Stopword filtering
This function ignores common but meaningless words (e.g. ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘and’) in search queries. This makes the search more precise and efficient, as indexing focuses on the relevant terms.
Synonym search
Advanced search operators allow you to refine your search queries in a targeted manner, for example using phrases, exclusions, wildcards or field searches. This is particularly helpful for users who want to carry out very precise searches.
* Certain functions require additional extensions, further components or a project-specific implementation and are not included in the standard scope of EXT:solr alone.
For site highlighting, EXT:solr merely handles the passing of the search term; the highlighting on the target page itself must be carried out by the project team.
Searching within attachments is only available in conjunction with additional extensions such as solrfal and EXT:tika.
Text and metadata extraction requires EXT:tika; for newer setups, such as those using TYPO3 v14 and Apache Solr 10, an additional component may also be required.