How to get Solr to tokenize forward slash

Question

Custom identifiers on my Rails objects include forward slashes. For example an identifier might look like ncsu.edu/123456789. When I try to query Solr for that identifier I'm getting back any result that has ncsu.edu in it. The metadata for the Rails object is below:

class IntellectualObjectMetadata < ActiveFedora::RdfxmlRDFDatastream
  map_predicates do |map|
    map.intellectual_object_identifier(in: RDF::DC, to: 'identifier') do |index|
      index.as :stored_searchable
    end
  end
end

And I'm querying like so:

IntellectualObject.where(desc_metadata__intellectual_object_identifier_tesim: params[:intellectual_object_identifier]).first

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to tokenize the Solr query so it returns only objects that match the whole identifier instead of partial matches. Thanks.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

1

Going from this answer here you can escape it with a backslash when you're searching for it, so in your case:

IntellectualObject.where(desc_metadata__intellectual_object_identifier_tesim: params[:intellectual_object_identifier].gsub("/","\/")).first

note the gsub to sub your / for \/

EDIT: as you can see in the documentation here:

Solr 4.0 added regular expression support, which means that '/' is now a special character and must be escaped if searching for literal forward slash.

so if you have a token saved like aaa/bbb you search for it with aaa\/bbb

EDIT #2: from the lucene docs which are linked to above.

Lucene supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list special characters are

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \ /

edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

Community

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answered Apr 24 '14 at 10:28

Mike H-R

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That doesn't actually work because the identifier stored in Solr still has the "\" in it. It doesn't matter how I pass the parameter in, what matters is how the identifier is stored. – user3254621 Apr 25 '14 at 13:06
See [here](https://wiki.apache.org/solr/SolrQuerySyntax) if you have `aaa/bbb` stored in your database you need to search for it with `aaa\/bbb` – Mike H-R Apr 25 '14 at 13:23
also, why do you have a backslash in your identifier? in the example you gave it was `ncsu.edu/123456789` – Mike H-R Apr 25 '14 at 13:26
Sorry, that was a typo. I meant "/". – user3254621 Apr 25 '14 at 13:35
Do you also need to escape periods? – user3254621 Apr 25 '14 at 13:37
doesn't look like it. – Mike H-R Apr 25 '14 at 13:41
Okay, well I tried adding the gsub and it still returns anything that matches the `ncsu.edu` part. Didn't change anything. – user3254621 Apr 25 '14 at 13:43
ok, well I'm not sure what else you're doing wrong, but that's the query syntax. – Mike H-R Apr 25 '14 at 13:46

How to get Solr to tokenize forward slash

1 Answers1