Solr Document Classification

_ Alessandro Benedetti

Introduction

This blog post is about the Solr classification module and the way Lucene classification has been integrated at indexing time.

In the previous blog we have explored the world of Lucene Classification and the extension to use it for Document Classification.

It comes natural to integrate Solr with the Classification module and allow Solr users to easily manage the Classification out of the box.

N.B. This is supported from Solr 6.1

Taking inspiration from the work of a dear friend [2], integrating the classification in Solr can happen 2 sides :

Indexing time – through an Update Request Processor
Query Time – through a Request handler ( similar to the More like This )

In this first article we are going to explore the Indexing time integration :

The Classification Update Request Processor.

Classification Update Request Processor

First of all let’s describe some basic concepts :

An Update Request Processor Chain, associated to an Update handler, is a pipeline of Update processors, that will be executed in sequence.
It takes in input the added Document (to be indexed) and return the document after it has been processed by all the processors in the chain in sequence.

Finally the document is indexed.

An Update Request Processor is the unit of processing of a chain, it takes in input a Document and operates some processing before it is passed to the following processor in the chain if any.

The main reason for the Update processor is to add intermediate processing steps that can enrich, modify and possibly filter documents , before they are indexed.
It is important because the processor has a view of the entire Document, so it can operate on all the fields the Document is composed.

For further details, follow the official documentation [3].

Description

The Classification Update Request Processor is a simple processor that will automatically classify a document ( the classification will be based on the latest index available) adding a new field containing the class, before the document is indexed.

After an initial valuable index has been built with human assigned labels to the documents, thanks to this Update Request Processor will be possible to ingest documents with automatically assigned classes.

The processing steps are quite simple :

When a document to be indexed enters the Update Processor Chain, and arrives to the Classification step, this sequence of operations will be executed :

The latest Index Reader is retrieved from the latest opened Searcher
A Lucene Document Classifier is instantiated with the config parameters in the solrconfig.xml
A Class is assigned by the classifier taking in consideration all the relevant fields from the input document
A new field is added to the original Document, with the class
The Document goes through the next processing step

Configuration

K Nearest Neighbours Classifier

<updateRequestProcessorChain name=”classification”>
<processor class=”solr.ClassificationUpdateProcessorFactory”>
<str name=”inputFields”>title^1.5,content,author</str>
<str name=”classField”>cat</str>
<str name=”algorithm”>knn</str>
<str name=”knn.k”>20</str>
<str name=”knn.minTf”>1</str>
<str name=”knn.minDf”>5</str>
</processor>
</updateRequestProcessorChain>

Simple Naive Bayes Classifier

<updateRequestProcessorChain name=”classification”>
<processor class=”solr.ClassificationUpdateProcessorFactory”>
<str name=”inputFields”>title^1.5,content,author</str>
<str name=”classField”>cat</str>
<str name=”algorithm”>bayes</str>
</processor>
</updateRequestProcessorChain>

Update Handler Configuration

<requestHandler name=”/update” >
<lst name=”defaults”>
<str name=”update.chain”>classification</str>
</lst>
</requestHandler>

Parameter	Default	Description
inputFields	This config param is mandatory	The list of fields (comma separated) to be taken in consideration for doing the classification. Boosting syntax is supported for each field.
classField	This config param is mandatory	The field that contains the class of the document. It must appear in the indexed documents . If knn algorithm it must be stored . If bayes algorithm it must be indexed and ideally not heavily analysed.
algorithm	knn	The algorithm to use for the classification: – knn ( K Nearest neighbours ) – bayes ( Simple Naive Bayes )
knn.k	10	Advanced – the no. of top docs to select in the MLT results to find the nearest neighbor
knn.minDf	1	Advanced – A term (from the input text) will be taken in consideration by the algorithm only if it appears at least in this minimum number of docs in the index
knn.minTf	1	Advanced – A term (from the input text) will be taken in consideration by the algorithm only if it appears at least this minimum number of times in the input

Usage

Indexing News Documents ? we can use the already indexed news with category, to automatically tag upcoming stories with no human intervention.
E-commerce Search System ? Category assignation will require few human interaction after a valid initial corpus of products has been indexed with manually assigned category.
The possible usage for this Update Request Processor are countless.
In any scenario where we have documents with a class or category manually assigned in our Search System, the automatic Classification can be a perfect fit.
Leveraging the existent Index , the overhead for the Classification processing will be minimal.
After an initial human effort to have a good corpus of classified Documents, the Search System will be able to automatically index the class for the upcoming Documents.
Of course we must remember that for advanced classification scenarios that require in deep tuning, this solution can be not optimal.

Code

The patch is attached to this Jira Issue :

SOLR-7739

This has been officially merged to Apache Solr starting with 6.1. version.

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Author

Alessandro Benedetti

Alessandro Benedetti is the founder of Sease Ltd. Senior Search Software Engineer, his focus is on R&D in information retrieval, information extraction, natural language processing, and machine learning.

Comments (14)

tonnebrre
May 3, 2016
Reply

thanks for your article

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tonnebrre
May 10, 2016
Reply

how can i apply the patch

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Alessandro Benedetti
May 10, 2016
Reply

You don't need , this is part of the official Solr already 🙂

Cheers

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tonnebrre
May 12, 2016
Reply

please tell me witch solr version you use ?

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Alessandro Benedetti
May 12, 2016
Reply

It is already in the Solr code (trunk) .
Not sure it is in any release yet !

Cheers

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tonnebrre
May 16, 2016
Reply

thanks a lot

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Tomas Ramanauskas
May 27, 2016
Reply

Hi, Alessandro, can you share some example on how to use this feature?

I never used Solr before, but today I downloaded solr-6.1.0-68 which I think already contains your modifications.

I then created a demo core:

./solr create -c demo

And also modified solr/demo/conf/solrconfig.xml file and added:

title_t^1.5,author_s
cat_s
bayes

I loaded few documents:

curl http://localhost:8984/solr/demo/update -d '
[
{“id” : “book1”,
“title_t”:[“The Way of Kings”],
“author_s”:”Brandon Sanderson”,
“cat_s”:”fantasy”,
“pubyear_i”:2010,
“ISBN_s”:”978-0-7653-2635-5″
}
]'

curl http://localhost:8984/solr/demo/update -d '
[
{“id” : “book2”,
“title_t”:[“The Way of Kings”],
“author_s”:”Brandon Sanderson”,
“cat_s”:”fantasy”,
“pubyear_i”:2010,
“ISBN_s”:”978-0-7653-2635-5″
}
]'

curl http://localhost:8984/solr/demo/update -d '
[
{“id” : “book3”,
“title_t”:[“The Way of Kings”],
“author_s”:”Brandon Sanderson”,
“cat_s”:”fantasy”,
“pubyear_i”:2010,
“ISBN_s”:”978-0-7653-2635-5″
}
]'

But what query shall I use to see the auto classification results?

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Tomas Ramanauskas
May 27, 2016
Reply

From the slide 28 in http://www.slideshare.net/teofili/text-categorization-with-lucene-and-solr presentation I see that the category is automatically assigned if it doesn't exist in the category field, but I don't get anything assigned if I add new documents:

curl http://localhost:8984/solr/demo/update -d '
[
{“id” : “book4”,
“title_t”:[“The Way of Kings”],
“author_s”:”Brandon Sanderson”,
“pubyear_i”:2010,
“ISBN_s”:”978-0-7653-2635-5″
}
]'

curl http://localhost:8984/solr/demo/update -d '
[
{“id” : “book5”,
“title_t”:[“The Way of Kings”],
“author_s”:”Brandon Sanderson”,
“cat_s”:””,
“pubyear_i”:2010,
“ISBN_s”:”978-0-7653-2635-5″
}
]'

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manohar c
June 30, 2016
Reply

Hi Alessandro,

i added classification in solr , but it is showing error like ” Load error: Error loading class 'ClassificationUpdateProcessorFactory”,

here is my solrconfig.xml.

case_title^1.5,case_history
Issue_Group
bayes

classification

is solr comes with classification algorithm? or should i need to add jar file in solr path?

Please help me to do it.

Thanks and Regards.

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Alessandro Benedetti
June 30, 2016
Reply

Hi Manohar,
Which version of Solr are you using ?
Without applying any patch you need Solr 6.1 .
Following the blog documentation should be enough to have it working, in the case you need some help, let me know!

Cheers

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manohar c
June 30, 2016
Reply

Hi Alessandro,

Thanks for quick response.

I am using solr 5.4.1, it is showing error like : “SolrException: Error loading class 'ClassificationUpdateProcessorFactory'”

How can i add ClassificationUpdateProcessorFactory algorithm in solr 5.4.1

I have different types of categories like Battery failure, Fan failure, HDD, MEMORY , Power Supply etc., in a seperate file.

I am pulling documents from sql server, i need to assign those categories to my documents.

let say

{“id” : “5463789”,
“case_history” fan related issue,
“Issue_Group”:”Fan failure”,
}

{“id” : “5463789”,
“case_history” memory related issues ,
“Issue_Group”:”MEMORY”,
}

Here my solrconfig.xml :

case_history
Issue_Group
knn
10
1
5

classification

Thanks in advance.

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manohar c
July 4, 2016
Reply

I am using Solr 5.4.1 , it is showing error like : “SolrException: Error loading class 'ClassificationUpdateProcessorFactory'” .

Can you please tell me , how can i do “document classification” in solr 5.4.1

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Rizwaan Adil
August 17, 2016
Reply

I am facing the same problem. My classification field Issue_Group is not getting populated after the data pull is over.

No error messages are noticed in the logs either.

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lehuyen
October 14, 2016
Reply

Could you please give me an example how to classification in SOLR???

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Introduction

N.B. This is supported from Solr 6.1