What is Solr catchall field

http://makble.com/what-is-solr-catchall-field

Searching in Solr is field based, means the search format will contains both field and query keywords.

 
title:key words
 

If you want to search all field, the field will be

 
*:key words
 

Sometimes you may don't care about fields, you just want to search keywords, any field that matched is OK.

In Goole we can only search the title with

 
allintitle:key words
 

But most of the time, we just type the keywords and go.

Search multiple fields in Solr

When you don't specify the field in you query string, the default field is searched. Default field is configured in solrconfig.xml as request handler parameter.

  <requestHandler name="/select" class="solr.SearchHandler">
 
     <lst name="defaults">
       <str name="echoHandler">true</str>
       <str name="echoParams">explicit</str>
       <int name="rows">10</int>
       <str name="df">text</str> <!-- default field -->
     </lst>
     ....
 

This default field also called catchall field, you can attach all the needed fields to this default field with copyField

   <copyField source="title" dest="text"/>
   <copyField source="author" dest="text"/>
   <copyField source="description" dest="text"/>
   <copyField source="keywords" dest="text"/>
   <copyField source="content" dest="text"/>
   <copyField source="content_type" dest="text"/>
   ...
 

When the default field is searched, all these fields will also be searched.

  <requestHandler name="/select" class="solr.SearchHandler">
 
     <lst name="defaults">
       <str name="echoHandler">true</str>
       <str name="echoParams">explicit</str>
       <int name="rows">10</int>
       <str name="df">text</str> <!-- default field -->
     </lst>
     ....