Simplifying Solr by Running It on Docker

It is now even easier to get started with Solr: you can run Solr on Docker with a single command:

$ docker run --name my_solr -d -p 8983:8983 -t solr

That creates a new Docker container using the new official Solr image, which includes OpenJDK and the latest release of Solr.

Then with a web browser go to http://localhost:8983/ to see the Admin Console (adjust the hostname for your docker host).

To use Solr, you need to create a “core”, an index for your data. For example:

$ docker exec -it --user=solr my_solr bin/solr create_core -c gettingstarted

In the web UI if you click on “Core Admin” you should now see the “gettingstarted” core.

If you want to load some example data:

$ docker exec -it --user=solr my_solr bin/post -c gettingstarted example/exampledocs/manufacturers.xml

In the UI, find the “Core selector” popup menu and select the “gettingstarted” core, then select the “Query” menu item. This gives you a default search for “:” which returns all docs. Hit the “Execute Query” button, and you should see a few docs with data. Congratulations!

This video demonstrates the image used with the user interface (Kitematic) from the Docker Toolbox on OSX:

Further instructions, including on how to run in a multi-container configuration can be found in the documentation, with further details in the FAQ. The code for this image is available in the docker-solr Github repository.

For those interested in how this came together: the image is based on the popular makuk66/docker-solr image, and you can see how that was further refined to be even friendlier to use and to better fit into Docker’s maintenance model in this pull request. A big thank-you to the Docker team for their help there.