Introduction to SMUI

SMUI v1.5.0 screenshot

SMUI is a tool for managing Solr-based onsite search. It provides a web user interface for maintaining and deploying Querqy Rules.

Basic concepts

SMUI manages various Querqy Rules and may be used to deploy said Rules to search engines. Each Rule is associated with a Search Input, i.e. a term entered into the managed search engine’s query. Rules are defined in a set of rules (a “Deployment Channel”). Each Deployment Channel results in a separate Querqy rules.txt file.

The basic workflow of SMUI is as follows:

• Create a Deployment Channel (using the REST API). This only needs to be done once per channel.

• Create Rules for various Search Inputs

• Deploy the Rules in a Deployment Channel

The deployment may occur by various methods. After deployment, the set of Rules in the Deployment Channel will be recognized by the Querqy plugin and thus applied to queries.

Rule types

Currently, SMUI supports two types of Querqy Rules: Search Rules and Spelling Rules.

Search rules

SMUI supports the following search rules, that can be deployed to a Querqy-supported search engine (like Solr):

• SYNONYM (directed & undirected)

• UP / DOWN

• FILTER

• DELETE

Please see the main Querqy documentation on rules for a description of those rules.

Furthermore, SMUI comes with built in DECORATE rules for certain use cases:

• REDIRECT (as Querqy/DECORATE) to a specific target URL

SMUI may as well leverage querqy’s @_log property to communicate SMUI rule IDs back to the application querying the search-engine.

Spelling rules

Spelling rules are using the querqy REPLACE rewriter to overwrite the input term. The following rules can be used to replace the input term:

	Spelling	Alternative	Description
simple rule	mobile	ombile	ombile => mobile Simple replacement of the alternative with the spelling
prefix rule	cheap	cheap*	cheap* => cheap Can be used to generalize spellings (e.g. cheapest pants => cheap pants). Just one suffix rule is allowed per spelling.
suffix rule	phone	*phones	*phones => phone Can be used to generalize spellings (e.g. smartphone => phone). Just one suffix rule is allowed per spelling.
wildcards	computer $1	computer*	computer* => computer $1 Can be used to generalize and split spellings (e.g. computertable => computer table). Just one suffix rule is allowed per spelling.

Note

This feature is disabled by default. You may activate it by setting the configuration key toggle.activate-spelling to true. See the feature configuration section for more information.

Rule Tagging

Rules may be enriched with tags in the SMUI web interface. These tags may serve as a means of categorizing rules, thus making them more easily accessible in the web interface. Furthermore, adding tags results in Querqy DECORATE Rules being created in the resulting rule file. This makes it possible to select Rules during query time.

Note

This feature is disabled by default. You may activate it by setting the configuration key toggle.rule-tagging to true. See the feature configuration section for more information.