How to configure Solr to use Levenshtein approximate string matching?

lucene solr levenshtein-distance
prinzdezibel picture prinzdezibel · Nov 17, 2009 · Viewed 14.8k times · Source

Does Apaches Solr search engine provide approximate string matches, e.g. via Levenshtein algorithm?

I'm looking for a way to find customers by last name. But I cannot guarantee the correctness of the names. How can I configure Solr so that it would find the person "Levenshtein" even if I search for "Levenstein" ?

Answer

Mauricio Scheffer picture Mauricio Scheffer · Nov 18, 2009

Typically this is done with the SpellCheckComponent, which internally uses the Lucene SpellChecker by default, which implements Levenshtein.

The wiki really explains very well how it works, how to configure it and what options are available, no point repeating it here.

Or you could just use Lucene's fuzzy search operator.

Another option is using a phonetic filter instead of Levenshtein.

Related questions

Solr vs. ElasticSearch

What are the core architectural differences between these technologies? Also, what use cases are generally more appropriate for each?

Read More
ElasticSearch, Sphinx, Lucene, Solr, Xapian. Which fits for which usage?

I'm currently looking at other search methods rather than having a huge SQL query. I saw elasticsearch recently and played with whoosh (a Python implementation of a search engine). Can you give reasons for your choice(s)?

Read More
using OR and NOT in solr query

I'm working on a solr query similar to the following: ((myField:superneat AND myOtherField:somethingElse) OR NOT myField:superneat) When running this, no results are returned. Using criteria on either side of the OR NOT returns results that I'd expect …

Read More