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Table of Contents
Search Result Highlighting
IMPORTANT: This page refers to features that were added in VuFind 1.1. If you are using an earlier version, you will have to upgrade.
VuFind supports highlighting in all of its current search modules, but the details are slightly different for each search platform.
Solr
VuFind's main Solr-based search has customizable highlighting features controlled by the highlighting setting in searches.ini. The related snippets setting and [Snippets_Captions] section may be used to control the display of highlighted text snippets when matches are found outside of the fields normally displayed by default as part of a search result.
VuFind 1.x Technical Details
If more advanced customization is needed, note that a lot of the highlighting behavior is controlled by the default IndexRecord record driver, with some low-level pieces embedded in the Solr class.
VuFind 2.x Technical Details
VuFind 2.x works much like 1.x, though the base record driver is now found in \VuFind\RecordDriver\SolrDefault and more of the highlighting logic has been moved out of the low-level Solr connection class and into the higher level Search objects.
Further Reading
The Solr highlighting documentation provides some information on what is possible.
For more technical details on VuFind's highlighting implementation, see this blog post.
Sharing Enhancements
If you add any significant features to your local VuFind instance, please consider sharing them in JIRA for inclusion in future releases of VuFind – there is definitely a potential for additional highlighting-related configuration options.
Summon
Highlighting in the Summon module is slightly less flexible than Solr highlighting, but it works very similarly, using the highlighting and snippets settings found in Summon.ini.
WorldCat
VuFind 1.x Details
Since WorldCat does not have a native highlighting feature, VuFind achieves highlighting of WorldCat results through the |highlight modifier in the WorldCat/list-list.tpl Smarty template – there are no .ini settings involved. To change highlighting functionality, you can override the template and/or change the definition of the highlight CSS class.
VuFind 2.x Details
VuFind 2.x's WorldCat module does not currently support highlighting. The feature was dropped in the interest of simplifying the code. If you need this capability, please vote on the VUFIND-640 JIRA ticket so it can be prioritized appropriately.