issue with facets in advanced search page

[gboushey]

Here's a write up along with steps to recreate the issue with advanced search facets that I mentioned on the blacklight developers forum (I’m hesitant to call it a bug since there's a good change it's an issue with my particular configuration).

The “bug” is a little obscure. Under a particular configuration, when you enter the advanced search screen without having selected any facets prior to entering this screen, facets do not display on the advanced search form. However, if you select a facet prior to entering this screen, facets do display.

This issue goes away with a code change to the get_advanced_search facets on the advanced search plugin, by moving the code that populates search_context_params outside the “if clause” (more detail below), though I wouldn’t really propose this as a bug fix since it’s very configuration dependent and I think it may be causing other side effects.

Unfortunately, steps to recreate are a little involved, since they depend on a different solr configuration than the one that ships with the blacklight quickstart, though we can use the example solr installation that ships with 4.7.1.

1. create a new blacklight rails app using quickstart the “easy way” (which really is easy, thanks for writing it!)
   rails new search_app -m https://raw.github.com/projectblacklight/blacklight/master/template.demo.rb

2. add the advanced search gem to Gemfile

gem 'blacklight_advanced_search', "~> 5.0"

and run bundle

and run the generator
rails generate blacklight_advanced_search

3. download the latest version of solr (4.7.0)

run the example configuration that ships with solr 4.7.0

(this is all taken from the solr tutorial at https://lucene.apache.org/solr/4_7_0/tutorial.html)

start the example solr within the solr-4.7.0 directory in /example

java -jar start.jar &

index some records in /example/exampledocs

java -jar post.jar *.xml

4. minimally configure catalog_controller in “new_search” (the app created in step 1) for this solr index…

catalog_controller and advanced_controller

config.add_facet_field 'cat', :label => 'Category'
config.add_facet_fields_to_solr_request!
config.add_index_field 'cat', :label => 'Category'
config.add_show_field 'cat', :label => 'Category'

config.add_search_field 'all_fields', :label => 'All Fields'
config.add_search_field 'cat', :label => 'Category'

(I got rid of everything else, since this is enough to reproduce the issue)

5. Start up the app

Under my_search

rails server

6. From the home page, click on “more options”

No facets will be displayed on the advanced search page

7. Return to the home page

limit your search to a category (facet)

and click on “more options”

Now you will see facets on the advanced search page

8. There is a code change that will force the facets to load on the advanced search page. I’m not convinced it’s the right approach here, but maybe it’ll help shed some light on why the facets weren’t building...

Override the get_advanced_search_facets method in advanced_controller

and move the code to build the search_context_params out of the if clause

...I did this by creating an advanced_search.rb file in the initializers and adding...

BlacklightAdvancedSearch::AdvancedController.module_eval do

def get_advanced_search_facets

  search_context_params = {}

  # We have a search context, need to fetch facets from within
  # that context -- but we dont' want to search within any
  # existing :q or ADVANCED facets, so we remove those params.
  adv_keys = blacklight_config.search_fields.keys.map {|k| k.to_sym}
  trimmed_params = params.reject do |k,v|        
    adv_keys.include?(k.to_sym) # the individual q params
  end
  trimmed_params.delete(:f_inclusive) # adv facets
  search_context_params = solr_search_params(trimmed_params)

  if (advanced_search_context.length > 0 )

  ...

Pulling the code to build search_context_params out of the if clause.

With this chance, the facets will show up on the advanced search page even if no facet was selected prior to linking to this page.

Note - Individual record links are also broken under this solr configuration, though this can be fixed by overriding solr_helper.rb as described in this blog post.

https://blogs.library.ucsf.edu/ckm/2014/03/11/working-with-blacklight-part-3-linking-to-your-solr-index/

[bcail]

I ran into this issue as well, although I got a Deprecation NameError when I tried to apply this fix.

Edit: I was able to fix the problem by adding facet fields directly to the solr request handler in solrconfig.xml (like the Blacklight example).

[atz]

Wondering: is this is still demonstrable? I will give the reproduction steps a try if I get a chance...