Fuzzy search

Find terms with similar spelling:

Type of query

solr_query value

Description

Similar spelling

'Kenya~'

The Solr fuzzy search syntax uses the Damerau-Levenshtein Distance algorithm to determine similarity of spelling based on distance. A range of 0-2 can be specified, such as Kenya~1. Default distance: 2

Proximity search

'"football Bolivia"~10'

Searches for football and Bolivia within 10 words of each other.

Range searches

'title:[football TO soccer}'

Supports both inclusive and exclusive bounds using square brackets and curly braces, respectively.

Term boosting

'"football"^4 "soccer"'

By default, the boost factor is 1. Must be a positive number.

The following example shows a search for Science in the title field using the default distance 2:

SELECT title FROM solr WHERE solr_query = 'title:Science~';

The first row is unexpected, given the difference of ci in Science to p in Spence; the letters are similar, but the meaning is dissimilar. The fifth row has Schenck, even more dissimilar, although within the distance of 2 just like Spence.

 title
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                          Aitken Spence
                                      African Journal of Marine Science
                            African Journal of Range and Forage Science
                              African Journal of Science and Technology
                                           Maarten Schenck van Nydeggen
                               African Journal of Neurological Sciences
                           National Natural Science Foundation of China
                           China Association for Science and Technology
 Philippine Science High School Cordillera Administrative Region Campus
           African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science

(10 rows)

This example shows a search for Science in the title field using a smaller distance of 1, which produces a more accurate result:

SELECT title FROM solr WHERE solr_query = 'title:Science~1';

 title
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                      African Journal of Marine Science
                            African Journal of Range and Forage Science
                              African Journal of Science and Technology
                               African Journal of Neurological Sciences
                           National Natural Science Foundation of China
                           China Association for Science and Technology
 Philippine Science High School Cordillera Administrative Region Campus
           African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science

(8 rows)

In this case, only the title with Sciences is different from all the other titles with Science in the title.