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Overview

This template provides a production‑ready Apache Solr instance as a Monk runnable. You can:
  • Run it directly to get a managed enterprise search platform with sensible defaults
  • Inherit it in your own runnable to seamlessly add powerful full-text search capabilities to your stack
Apache Solr is a blazing-fast, open-source enterprise search platform built on Apache Lucene. It provides distributed indexing, replication, load-balanced querying, automated failover and recovery, centralized configuration, and more.

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What this template manages

  • Solr container (solr image, configurable tag)
  • Network service on port 8983
  • Persistent volumes for data and configuration
  • Admin UI and REST API access
  • Schema and configuration management

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Quick start (run directly)

  1. Load templates
monk load MANIFEST
  1. Run Solr with defaults
monk run solr/solr
Once started, connect to the Admin UI at http://localhost:8983/solr/ (or the runnable hostname inside Monk networks).

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Configuration

Key variables you can customize in this template: 
variables:
  solr-image-tag: "latest"  # container image tag
Data is persisted under ${monk-volume-path}/solr/soldata on the host. Custom Solr configuration is mounted from files/solr.xml. Inherit the Solr runnable in your application and declare a connection. Example: 
namespace: myapp
search:
  defines: runnable
  inherits: solr/solr
api:
  defines: runnable
  containers:
    api:
      image: myorg/api
  connections:
    search-engine:
      runnable: search
      service: solr
  variables:
    solr-host:
      value: <- connection-hostname("search-engine")
    solr-port:
      value: "8983"
Run your app group: 
monk run myapp/api

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Ports and connectivity

  • Service: solr on TCP port 8983
  • From other runnables in the same process group, use connection-hostname("\<connection-name>") to resolve the Solr host.

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Persistence and configuration

  • Data path: ${monk-volume-path}/solr/soldata:/var/solr
  • Config file: files/solr.xml mounted to /opt/solr/server/solr/solr.xml
  • Cores, indexes, and configurations are persisted across restarts

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Features

  • Full-Text Search: Advanced text analysis and search
  • Faceted Search: Drill-down navigation
  • Hit Highlighting: Show matched terms in context
  • Real-Time Indexing: Near-instant document availability
  • Distributed Search: SolrCloud for horizontal scaling
  • Rich Document Support: PDF, Word, Excel, HTML, etc.
  • Geospatial Search: Location-based queries
  • Spell Checking: Did-you-mean suggestions
  • Auto-Suggest: Type-ahead completions
  • REST API: JSON, XML, CSV responses

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Creating a Core

# Create a core named "mycollection"
curl "http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/cores?action=CREATE&name=mycollection&configSet=_default"
Or via Admin UI: Core Admin → Add Core

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Indexing Documents

JSON API: 
curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  'http://localhost:8983/solr/mycollection/update?commit=true' \
  -d '[
    {
      "id": "1",
      "title": "Apache Solr",
      "description": "Enterprise search platform"
    },
    {
      "id": "2",
      "title": "Elasticsearch",
      "description": "Distributed search engine"
    }
  ]'

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Searching Documents

# Simple search
curl "http://localhost:8983/solr/mycollection/select?q=apache"

# Faceted search
curl "http://localhost:8983/solr/mycollection/select?q=*:*&facet=true&facet.field=category"

# With filters
curl "http://localhost:8983/solr/mycollection/select?q=*:*&fq=category:tech"

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Schema Configuration

Define fields and types in schema.xml or use the Schema API: 
# Add field
curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  'http://localhost:8983/solr/mycollection/schema' \
  -d '{
    "add-field": {
      "name": "price",
      "type": "pfloat",
      "indexed": true,
      "stored": true
    }
  }'

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SolrCloud (Distributed Mode)

For production scalability with multiple Solr nodes:
  1. Deploy a ZooKeeper ensemble
  2. Configure Solr nodes to connect to ZooKeeper
  3. Create collections with sharding and replication
# Create collection with 2 shards, 2 replicas each
curl "http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/collections?action=CREATE&name=products&numShards=2&replicationFactor=2"
Refer to the SolrCloud documentation for detailed setup instructions.

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Use cases

Solr excels at:
  • E-commerce product search
  • Enterprise document search
  • Log and event search
  • Geospatial applications
  • Content management systems
  • Knowledge bases
  • Recommendation engines

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Troubleshooting

  • Access Admin UI at http://localhost:8983/solr/ to check core status and run queries
  • Use the Analysis page in Admin UI to debug search queries and test analyzers
  • Check logs:
monk logs -l 500 -f solr/solr
  • For indexing issues, verify document format matches your schema definition
  • For performance issues, consider using a custom solr.xml configuration with increased JVM heap and cache settings
  • Ensure the host volume is writable by the container user
  • If cores are not loading, verify the solr.xml configuration and core definitions