loganfsmyth [loganfsmyth]

CVS edit link for loganfsmyth

Hello there,
I am requesting a CVS account in order to start a new project centered around using the SolrJS library to provide AJAX search capabilities to the Apachesolr Search module.

This new module will load all facets in place of the apachesolr module and allow for direct communication with the Solr server, which takes load off of the drupal site and allows for content distribution over multiple servers. As another options, the javascript can still route it's queries through Drupal as a menu callback. This enables higher security while still reducing the server load. I will also create a secondary file that would minimally bootstrap drupal in order to look up info in the db and still provide the security options.
Another positive is that queries can be routed to a secondary server, meaning that you could have one solr instance running through the apachesolr module for indexing, but have a replication server for the javascript to connect to.

The SolrJS library itself seems to no longer be in active development by the original developer, but hopefully I will be able to reach him eventually. I have made extensive modifications to the library and will be including that in the module as well.
The original code supports a javascript class extension method that allows for the creation of new classes that extend others. Using this functionality, the Drupal specific functions have been separated into their own files. A benefit of this design is that it means that any other module developer could override functions to create their own widget js files and create instances of these widgets in the page. So for instance, if you wanted to add a link after every search result, you could create a custom widget that extends the result widget, and implement the rendering function, allowing you to theme the output of the results.

I also JUST discovered that Drupal has support for basic theming via the 'Drupal.theme' javascript function, which I may end up using.

More info on SolrJS can be found here. http://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolrJS
More info on ApacheSolr can be found here. http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr

The module has been under development for several weeks now, and a demo can be found here on our dev server. http://solrjsdemo.ewdev.ca/search/apachesolr_search/luptatum

My last application was denied because of a single place where the #required was being set in a way that was unsatisfactory. I was conditionally setting it because the fields are only required under certain circumstances. I've asked on IRC and people told me that using $form_state['post'] in the form generation function isn't a good idea. I have looked at the FAPI documentation a lot, but there isn't much on the required flag. Now, I was settings it based on either the form_state or the variable_set values. It worked fine and I don't know how else I could possibly set a boolean variable.

Anyway, at this point I have removed the required flags entirely and taken a better route around the general problem anyway, so there is no need to require the fields anyway.

Thanks much,
Logan Smyth
Evolving Web