This is a service that provides a simple API for searching for books, implemented using Scala and Spray, using book metadata stored in Solr.
The service supports:
- Free text search for books.
- Incremental search for books and authors, for as-you-type suggestions in a search field.
- Finding books that are similar to a given book.
- Suggest corrected spellings for search terms.
URL: /search/suggestions
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| q | String | - | Search query |
| offset | Integer | 0 | Index of first result to return, for pagination |
| count | Integer | 20 | Number of results to return |
Example response:
{
"type": "urn:blinkboxbooks:schema:search",
"id": "dickens",
"links": [
{
"rel": "this",
"href": "http://search.service/search/books?q=dickens&offset=0"
},
{
"rel": "next",
"href": "http://search.service/search/books?q=dickens&offset=50&count=50"
}
],
"numberOfResults": "310",
"books": [
{
"id": "9780141974132",
"title": "Nicholas Nickleby",
"authors": [
"Charles Dickens"
]
},
{
"id": "9780141974149",
"title": "Our Mutual Friend",
"authors": [
"Charles Dickens"
]
}
]
}URL: /search/suggestions
This will perform a search and return suggested books and authors. The query that's run will use the given query string as a prefix of potential matches, i.e. assume that the string is not a complete query but what a user has typed so far.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| q | String | - | Search query |
| count | Integer | 20 | Number of results to return |
Example response:
{
"items": [
{
"type": "urn:blinkboxbooks:schema:suggestion:book",
"title": "Italo Calvino's Architecture of Lightness",
"id": "9781136730597",
"authors": [
"Letizia Modena"
]
},
{
"type": "urn:blinkboxbooks:schema:suggestion:contributor",
"title": "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler",
"id": "9780156439619",
"authors": [
"Italo Calvino"
]
}
]
}URL: /search/books/{id}/similar
This endpoint will use Solr's "More Like This" functionality to return books that are similar to a specified one.
The id is the ISBN of the book for which we want to find similar books.
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| offset | Integer | 0 | Index of first result to return, for pagination |
| count | Integer | 20 | Number of results to return |
Example response:
{
"type": "urn:blinkboxbooks:schema:search:similar",
"id": "9781451685626",
"links": [
{
"rel": "this",
"href": "http://search.service/search/books/9781451685626/similar?offset=0"
},
{
"rel": "next",
"href": "http://search.service/search/books/9781451685626/similar?offset=10"
}
],
"numberOfResults": "310",
"books": [
{
"id": "9780141974132",
"title": "Nicholas Nickleby",
"authors": [
"Charles Dickens"
]
},
{
"id": "9780141974149",
"title": "Our Mutual Friend",
"authors": [
"Charles Dickens"
]
}
]
}This repository contains the configuration used to set up Solr, in the src/main/resources/ folder. These files configure a Solr instance with a single core called books, and provides the schema for this.
The schema (in schema.xml) defines the metadata fields used on documents that represent books, as well as the tokenizers used to process text field.
The solrconfig.xml file contains definitions of the query handlers used for search and "more like this" queries, and the spell checker.
The Search Service builds as a standalone Jar file using sbt.
It uses the common Blinkbox Books conventions and approaches to configuration, metrics, health endpoints etc., see the common-config library for details.
See the application.conf file for properties that need to be provided, and reference.conf for settings that can optionally be overridden.
As well as a suite of unit tests, the service has a set of functional tests that are run in the same way as the unit tests, using ScalaTest (i.e. run via sbt run).
The functional tests are of particular interest, as they run against an embedded Solr instance configured using the actual Solr configuration. This ensures that this configuration works as expected, and that it's compatible with the code in the Search Service.