Opensolr Search for Drupal 5.0.0: Search by Image, Hover-Zoom Lightbox, AI Toggle and a Duration Facet
Version 5.0.0 of the Opensolr Search module for Drupal is the biggest search-page release yet. It turns the results page into a modern, visual search experience: search with a photo instead of words, zoom and preview images inline, switch AI on or off per search, filter facets across every value, slice video by length, and see the real metadata behind every document.
01 Search with a photo, not just words
A camera button now sits at the left of the search box. Pick a picture and the module hands it to the Opensolr image engine, which reads it three ways: it recognises what the picture shows (visual labels), it reads any text printed on it (OCR), and it scans it for barcodes and QR codes. Whatever it finds becomes the search query and runs as a completely normal search — so every language, facet and filter keeps working.
The search box stays empty and shows a small thumbnail of the photo you searched with, because the machine-read words look like a glitch when they are dropped into the input. Hovering the thumbnail grows it into a preview; clicking it opens the full-size picture with the exact words and codes it was read as. When text was read off the picture, a short note says “Read from your image: …” and offers a one-click “search by picture meaning” alternative that re-runs the search by what the picture depicts instead of the text on it. A spinner replaces the camera icon while the picture is being read, so you are never left staring at a dead button.
02 Result images that zoom and open full size
Result thumbnails now grow a little on hover, and a click opens the image full size in a clean lightbox with the page title linked underneath, so a visitor can look closely and then jump straight to the source page. The searched image opens the same viewer, showing the words and any codes it was read as.
03 An AI switch on the results page
A per-search AI toggle sits next to the Fresh control. With it on, the query runs as hybrid search — classic keyword scoring blended with dense vector similarity, so a search for a concept surfaces both exact matches and semantically related documents. With it off, the same query runs as pure keyword search. It is the visitor's choice for a single search and never changes how the index is configured.
04 A Duration facet for time-based fields
Any integer-seconds field — video length, audio runtime, a processing time — can now be exposed as a Duration facet: a min/max slider whose handles and inputs read as h:mm:ss instead of a raw seconds count. Drag the range, or type 1:30:00, and the results narrow to that band.
05 The facet filter now searches every value
The little Filter box above a long facet used to match only the handful of values already on screen, so typing a term that lived deeper in the list found nothing. It now searches the field's complete value list, and shares a single fetch with the “Show all” dialog, so the second view is instant.
06 Documents that are no longer bare
Document results (PDF, Office files and the like) now carry their real metadata: page count, content type, detected language, author, and modification date — extracted by the Web Crawler and shown right under the title.