Direct Integration¶

Requirements¶

Java version >= 11
approximately, 120MB to 300MB additional Java Heapspace (depending on the amount of data to be managed)
If a firewall is used, it needs to be configured to allow connections to the following HTTPS endpoints: https://query.searchhub.io/ and https://import.searchhub.io/

Maven Dependency¶

The smartQuery library can be pulled as a maven dependency from our private repository https://nexus.commerce-experts.com/content/repositories/searchhub-external/.

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.searchhub</groupId>
    <artifactId>smartquery</artifactId>
    <version>2.3.1</version>
</dependency>

<!-- ... -->

<repository>
    <id>external-releases</id>
    <url>https://nexus.commerce-experts.com/content/repositories/searchhub-external/</url>
</repository>

Essential Usage¶

The library contains the following three central types:

Tenant

Simple POJO that represents a single data domain. (See the glossary about what a Tenant is.)

QueryMapper

The central component provided by the smartQuery library is the QueryMapper. It provides query mappings with the mapQuery method.

QueryMapping mapQuery(String input): This method returns a query mapping, with the original user query, a mapped query and an optional redirect URL. A QueryMapping has some convenient methods to handle redirects and queries accordingly - please refer to the Javadoc.

QueryMapperManager

This class is responsible for initializing and managing the QueryMappers for the required Tenants. It needs to be instantiated with the provided API key 3. It’s important to use a single QueryMapperManager object since it will internally spawn and manage several threads to update the QueryMapper instances asynchronously, and retain a reference to it. If no longer needed, the close method should be called to stop the internal update threads.

QueryMapper getQueryMapper(Tenant t)

The getQueryMapper method will always return the same instance of QueryMapper for the same given Tenant. As a result, it’s not necessary to keep a reference to the QueryMapper. However, keeping a reference to a QueryMapper instance isn’t a problem since each QueryMapper will be updated in the background.

A non-existing tenant won’t cause an error but simply return a QueryMapper which always returns null.

QueryMapping

The object returned by the QueryMapper contains all information to change the search result. The main focus is to change the natural query that is processed by the search engine. That’s the so-called ‘masterQuery’. In case there is not master query, the original user query should be used for search. To avoid null-checks, the ‘getSearchQuery’ method can be used, as it does that internally and will always return the correct one.

However there are also optional properties in the response that should influence the search process:

redirect: URL to a landing page. If given, the search process can be stopped and the user can be redirected to the according URL.
potentialCorrections: An optional array of 1 or 2 queries that could be a correction to the given query. They are given in case no reliable masterQuery could be found and should be shown to the user as possible alternative queries. More information in the best practices story about potential corrections
relatedQueries: An optional list of queries that are related to the user input. They can be used as inspiring queries next to the search result.
resultModifications: An optional list of up to four different object types, each describing how the initial search result should be modified. Each modification type is paired with a list of corresponding IDs (docIDs).

Supported resultModification types:
- Add: The specified IDs should be inserted into the result at any position during result generation, allowing them to be discovered through scrolling, filtering, or sorting..
- Remove: Products with the specified IDs should be excluded from the result, if present. This should occur during result generation to ensure accurate facet filtering.
- Pin: The specified product IDs should be included in the result and placed at the top.
- Penalize: The specified products should receive a score reduction, pushing them toward the end of the result.

Note

The API Key and the preload tenants are automatically populated with the same environment variables as the REST-service: If the environment variable SH_API_KEY is available, the API Key is set to it. Same for SH_INIT_TENANTS that adds tenants to the list of preloaded tenants.

3: We will provide you with a personal API Key.

Usage Example¶

private QueryMapperManager qmManager = QueryMapperManager.builder()
                                         .apiToken("YourApiKey")
                                         .updateRate(360)               // optional
                                         .preloadTenants("example.com") // optional
                                         .build();

public void searchProcess(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
{
    // init search process...

    Tenant tenant = new Tenant("example", "com");
    QueryMapper qm = qmManager.getQueryMapper(tenant);

    String searchQuery = req.getParameter("q");

    // in case the session-id of the searchHub collector is given, it should be used here.
    // If not, stick with 'null' because a different session leads to unwanted results!
    QueryMapping mapping = qm.mapQuery(searchQuery, req.getCookieValue("SearchCollectorSession"));
    if (mapping.hasRedirect()) {
        resp.setHeader("Location", mapping.getRedirect());
        resp.setStatus(302);
        return;
    } else {
        searchQuery = mapping.getSearchQuery();
    }

    // continue with search process...
}

// It's recommended to bind the qmManager instance to your JVM's lifecycle
// and close the QueryMapperManager during shutdown.
// Internally a ScheduledExecutorService is used, that will be stopped then.
@PreDestroy
public void onJvmShutdown() {
    qmManager.close();
}

The Javadoc of the QueryMapperManager.builder() methods tell you more about the available settings.

Integration with sessionID¶

If our search collector is integrated into the frontend of your system, it is recommended to pass the corresponding sessionId to smartQuery. This sessionId is used for clusters with queries being tested to distribute the search traffic evenly between both queries. Without the sessionId, the informative value and success rate of these tests are lower.

For implementation, the value of the SearchCollectorSession cookie MUST be used. Using a different sessionId will lead to unexpected results. If the SearchCollectorSession cookie does not exist or is not provided for a request, pass ‘null’ instead.

More information about this extended integration is in the best practices section.

Monitoring¶

smartQuery optionally exposes internal metrics using the Micrometer framework. If you’d like to receive these metrics, add the desired Micrometer connector to your dependencies, as well as the MeterRegistry implementation.

// ...
MeterRegistry meterRegistry = getYourMeterRegistryInstance();


// Example: To expose metrics over JMX, create a JmxMeterRegistry
meterRegistry = new JmxMeterRegistry(JmxConfig.DEFAULT, Clock.SYSTEM);

// and add it to the QueryMapperManager.builder afterwards
queryMapperManagerBuilder.addMetricsRegistryAdapter(MeterRegistryAdapter.of(meterRegistry));

// ...

Subsequently, you will be able to track the following metrics:

smartquery.statsCollector.queue.size¶: The current number of items inside the transmission queue of the stats-collector. Since the queue size is limited to 500 entries per default, a higher value should never appear. Hitting this limit is an indicator of a broken connection to the stats API.
smartquery.statsCollector.bulk.size.count¶
smartquery.statsCollector.bulk.size.sum¶
smartquery.statsCollector.bulk.size.max¶: The stats-collector’s bulk size metrics describe how large the bulks are that were sent to the searchHub stats API. With sum/count the average size can be calculated. Max is the biggest bulk since the application started.
smartquery.statsCollector.fail.count.total¶: The total amount of failed transmissions, that were reported to the stats API.
smartquery.update.fail.count¶: The number of successive failed mapping update attempts for a certain tenant. If an update succeeds, this value will be reset to “0”. If this value reaches “5”, that update process will be stopped and only started again if mappings for the respective tenant are requested once more. This metric is tagged with the appropriate tenant_name and tenant_channel.
smartquery.update.success.count.total¶: The total number of successful data updates per tenant. This metric is tagged with the respective tenant_name and tenant_channel.
smartquery.mappings.size¶: The current number of raw mapping pairs per tenant. This metric is tagged with the respective tenant_name and tenant_channel.
smartquery.mappings.age.seconds¶: Time passed since the last successful mapping update. This metric is tagged with the respective tenant_name and tenant_channel.