Import Dynamic Fields from XML into Solr via DIH

Given an XML file that needs to be imported into Solr, you may often run into some uncommon data values that would be:

• best grouped together under the banner of some dynamic field defined in schema.xml file,
• with their mapping left up to the discretion of an admin tweaking the data-config.xml file, just before running DIH.

Off the cuff, one may be at a loss on how exactly to accomplish this ... and in doubt if it can even be done! You've seen this done for databases with Data Import Handler (DIH) but not with the XPath handler, or URL datasource, or File datasource for XML.

Well it can be done and here's an example:

1. Lets say your XML file looks something like this:
   

   
     
       
       tough and durable
       heavy
       2 inches
     
     
       
       sharp and thin
       hazard
       1 inch
     
   
   

2. Now disposition, width, dangerLevel, height are pieces of data that you may not be able to plan ahead for, in your schema.xml file. So instead it makes sense to leave some wiggle room by defining somewhat predictable dynamic fields like so:
   
   Keep in mind that you have some flexibility and responsibility here in terms of choosing the type of the dynamic field ahead of time.
   
3. Now when your customers or customer-facing-admins who are handling the data-import.xml file and will be looking to kick-off DIH against an XML file that they know best ... it will be quite an easy for them to come up with something like the following on the spot:
   
   and still have an agreed upon well-oiled working index at the end of the day.
   

Flex4: Nuances of a flexible UI (Part 1)

Given:
1) a s:Group with a width of 100
2) a s:Label inside it with left="10", right="10", textAlign="right"
I would hope that flex calculates the width for the label to be 80 and my text stays right aligned within those bounds with the freedom to grow vertically as I haven't set the Height or maxDisplayedLines properties. But that is not the case!
Expand/Collapse Example

Inspecting the properties at runtime via flexspy shows that the width has set to an obscene number like 10000 and if I change the text to be really really long, it simply overflows its boundaries from the right side! Which is a bit of a surprise because it goes against my intuition of having textAlign="right", which I had hoped, would at least make the overflow happen towards the left side. Even setting maxDisplayedLines="1" does not truncate the text because it thinks that it can grow up to a width of 10000 before it has to honor that property.

So apparently the right way to do this is to give up on the idea that width will be calculated based on the gap between left and right.

So if instead, for the s:Label, you specify:
a) right="10", textAlign="right" then you'll have text that can overflow towards the left side
Expand/Collapse Example

b) right="10", textAlign="right" and width="80" then you'll have text that will wrap and grow vertically as it gets longer.
Expand/Collapse Example

c) right="10", textAlign="right", width="80 and maxDisplayedLines="1" then you'll have text that will wrap and grow towards left until it gets too long and will then get truncated.
Expand/Collapse Example

I would say that this is really inflexible as I can never have text that grows within its left and right bounds and gets truncated only when it overflows the dynamically calculated width within those bounds... but oh well, such is life.