How to Read a Solr Schema

A schema.xml has three kinds of entries. Knowing them is enough to read the whole site search schema, or any other.

field

A named field with a type, such as title.

dynamicField

A name pattern, such as *_f. Any field whose name matches it is created the first time a document carries it, with that type. This is how you add fields without editing the schema: Add any field with a suffix.

fieldType

How values are kept and, for text, how they are cut into searchable words: How text is analysed.

The switches on a field

Each field carries a few switches. They decide what you can do with it.

indexed

The value can be searched and filtered. og_image is the only content field that is not: it comes back in results but cannot be searched.

stored

The original value is kept and comes back in results. Fields used only for matching (spell, the autocomplete fields, the phonetic_* fields and embeddings) are not stored, to save disk.

docValues

A column copy of the value for fast sorting, facets and functions. Every string, number and date field of this schema has it. Text fields cannot.

multiValued

The field can hold a list. _sm, _ss, _fm, _im, _dtm and _d are multi-valued; _s, _f, _i, _l, _dt and _b hold one value.

termVectors

The position of every word is kept, so highlighting is fast and exact. On for uri, title, description, text and every *_t field.

Results are scored with BM25, the Solr default. How much each field counts is set at search time in Field weights, not in the schema.

Schema reference pages

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