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Apache Solr

What is Apache Solr?​

Apache Solr is a search platform built on Apache Lucene, offering full-text search, faceting, and indexing over HTTP. Laradock builds it from the official solr Docker image, with its admin UI and API on one port.

Start Solr​

./laradock start solr

Name any other services alongside it to start them together, for example ./laradock start solr mysql.

Stop Solr​

Stopping just pauses the container; your cores are safe, they live under DATA_PATH_HOST/solr:

./laradock stop solr

To delete the container entirely (the data on disk is still untouched):

./laradock remove solr

Configuration​

All settings live in solr/defaults.env and can be overridden by adding the same line to your own .env:

VariableDefaultWhat it does
SOLR_VERSION8.11Image tag from the official Solr image.
SOLR_PORT8983Host-side port for both the admin UI and the API (container port 8983).
SOLR_DATAIMPORTHANDLER_MYSQLfalseWhen true, downloads the MySQL Connector/J JDBC driver at build time for the DataImportHandler.
SOLR_DATAIMPORTHANDLER_MSSQLfalseWhen true, downloads the Microsoft JDBC driver at build time for the DataImportHandler.

Open the admin UI​

http://localhost:8983/solr

Create a core​

./laradock exec solr solr create_core -c mycore

Check core status​

./laradock exec solr solr status

You can also check a single core's health from the admin UI (Core Admin page) or by hitting http://localhost:8983/solr/mycore/admin/ping.

Delete a core​

./laradock exec solr solr delete -c mycore

Enable a JDBC data import connector​

  1. In .env, set SOLR_DATAIMPORTHANDLER_MYSQL=true (or SOLR_DATAIMPORTHANDLER_MSSQL=true).
  2. Rebuild with a clean cache, since the connector is downloaded during the build:
docker compose build --no-cache solr

Backup and restore a core​

Solr's replication handler can snapshot a core to disk and restore it later, no extra tooling needed. Both commands hit the core's own HTTP endpoint:

Back up mycore (writes a snapshot.<timestamp> folder inside that core's data directory, under DATA_PATH_HOST/solr/mycore/data):

curl "http://localhost:8983/solr/mycore/replication?command=backup"

Check command=details to confirm the backup finished before relying on it:

curl "http://localhost:8983/solr/mycore/replication?command=details"

Restore the most recent snapshot back into mycore:

curl "http://localhost:8983/solr/mycore/replication?command=restore"

Both commands run asynchronously; poll restore progress with command=restorestatus. Because the snapshot is written under DATA_PATH_HOST/solr, copying that folder off-host is also a valid manual backup.

Start completely fresh (wipe all data)​

To throw away every core and start Solr from a clean, empty state (⚠️ this permanently deletes all cores and their indexed data, back up first if you need anything):

./laradock stop solr
./laradock remove solr
rm -rf "${DATA_PATH_HOST:-~/.laradock/data}/solr"
./laradock start solr

DATA_PATH_HOST is whatever you have set in .env (~/.laradock/data by default). That folder is mounted straight to /opt/solr/server/solr/mycores, Solr's entire cores directory, so wiping it removes every core, not just their documents. After starting again you'll need to create your cores from scratch.

Tune the JVM heap size​

Solr's upstream image reads its JVM heap size from a SOLR_HEAP environment variable, but solr/compose.yml doesn't pass it through by default. Add it yourself under the solr service:

environment:
  - SOLR_HEAP=1g

Then apply the change:

./laradock restart solr

Solr's default heap is fairly small (512m); indexing anything non-trivial usually calls for raising this.

Talk to this Solr from another Laradock project​

Each Laradock project is its own isolated Docker network by default, so a second project's containers can't reach this Solr by container name out of the box. Easiest fix: publish the port (already done, SOLR_PORT) and have the other project connect to your host machine's address instead of solr, for example http://host.docker.internal:8983/solr (Docker Desktop). Make sure the two projects use different SOLR_PORT values if they're both running at once.

Common issues​

  • Changing SOLR_VERSION doesn't take effect. It's a build argument, rebuild after changing it: ./laradock rebuild solr.
  • JDBC connectors missing. They're only fetched when the matching flag was true at build time, flip the flag and rebuild with docker compose build --no-cache solr, a plain rebuild reuses the cached layer and skips the download.
  • Cores don't persist across restarts. They're written to DATA_PATH_HOST/solr (mounted to /opt/solr/server/solr/mycores), confirm DATA_PATH_HOST is set consistently between runs.
  • Port already in use on your host. Change SOLR_PORT in .env and restart: ./laradock restart solr.
  • Indexing is slow or Solr gets OOM-killed on large collections. Raise the JVM heap, see Tune the JVM heap size above.

Need a lighter-weight search engine instead? See Manticore. Back to the Getting Started guide.