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Topics

A topic is a meaningful characterization of all of the data in one or more data sources. One data source can have multiple topics, and you can associate a single topic with multiple data sources. What we call "topics" are often called "tags."

Examples are news, press_releases, products, and reviews. Topics can only contain lowercase letters, numbers, and underscores. You can map these topic names to any display names you want in the Topic Manager.

You can add a Topic Tabs module to a page to let users choose subsets of search results based on topics.

Topics and facets compared

Topics and facets are similar. This is a comparison:

Aspect Topics Facets

Browsing

Browse all search results from one or more data sources

Browse subsets of search results based on values of fields in the search results

Searching

You can configure a Search Box to limit searches to a specific topic or topics. Using the Search API, you can also limit a search to a specific topic or topics.

Facets are an available module for limiting searches one facet at a time. In the Search API, you can specify one or more facets.

Granularity

Broad, data-source level

Narrow, data-value level

Combine categories

Associate the same topic with multiple datasources. A tab for that topic will contain search results for the data sources with that topic associated. You predefine the combinations.

Users can select multiple facets. They define the combinations.

Add Topics

Add topics to let users distinguish search results based on data sources. There are two approaches:

  • On the Configuration tab for a data source – When you add a new topic on the Configuration tab for a data source, that topic is added and it is associated with the data source. Optionally, associate the topic with other data sources on the Configuration tabs for other data sources.

  • In the Topic Manager – When you add a new topic in the Topic Manager, that topic is added but isn’t associated with any data sources. You must associate the topic with data sources on the Configuration tabs for the data sources.

In both cases, you can change the display name of topics in the Topic Manager.

How to add topics on the Configuration tab in a data source

When adding a new data source or editing an existing one, scroll down to Data Source Topics, and then enter topics. The topics can be new ones or can already exist.

To associate the same tags with other data sources, repeat this step for the data sources.

How to add topics in the Topic Manager

  1. Open the Site Search menu – In the upper left corner of Site Search, click Edit.

  2. Click Topics in the left menu.

    Add topics

  3. Repeat these steps for each topic you want to add:

  1. In the Topics table, enter a Topic (the name for the topic on Configuration tabs of crawlers) and the Display Name (the name for the topic shown in the search app).

  2. Click Create New Topic.

Disassociate topics from a data source

You can disassociate topics from a data source. Doing so doesn’t delete the topics, even if they aren’t used by other data sources.

How to disassociate topics for a data source

  1. In the Site Search menu, click the data source for which you want to disassociate topics.

  2. Scroll down to the bottom of the Configuration tab.

  3. Under Data Source Topics, click the Disassociate topic.

Tip
 If a topic isn’t used by other data sources, you probably want to delete it in the Topic Manager. Deleting the topic in the Topic Manager will remove the topic from the Topic Tabs module, and the user won’t see a grayed-out tab with zero documents.

Delete topics

Delete topics that are no longer needed. Deleted topics will no longer appear as tabs in the Topic Tabs module (both in an Enterprise Search app and in embedded modules).

How to delete topics

  1. In the Site Search menu, click Topics in the left menu.

  2. In the Topics table, hover over the topic you want to delete, and then click Delete Delete.

Restrict search results to specific topics

You can restrict search results to specific topics:

Modules:

Search API:

In the request, include a topics request parameter that specifies the topics to which to restrict search results. For example, to search for module and restrict the search results to the topics lucidworks_cloud and site_search:

curl -H 'X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY' 'https://subdomain.lucidworks.cloud/pathname/api/v1/search?q=module&topics=lucidworks_cloud,site_search'