Okay, here’s my blog post about my “yokozuna what happened” adventure:
So, the other day I was like, “I gotta figure out this Yokozuna thing.” I’d heard about it, seen it mentioned, but never really got it. It’s supposed to be this search thingy, right? But how does it all work? Time to get my hands dirty.
First Steps – Getting Stuff
First, I needed to, you know, actually get Yokozuna. I poked around, did some digging, I have to installed a few things. I realized Yokozuna is tightly coupled with Riak KV and Solr, that means before run Yokozuna, I have to make sure both Riak KV and Solr can work independently, all I have to do is set up Riak, set up Solr, and then I could start messing with Yokozuna.
The Riak part, I installed the Riak KV, honestly, seemed simple enough. Get it running, make sure it’s talking, default port is fine. Solr was similar, I used docker to simplify the deployment and testing, download the image, run it. I mean, following those “getting started” guides, it’s mostly just copy-pasting commands.
Connecting the Dots (or, the “Aha!” Moment)
Okay, so I had Riak humming along, and Solr doing its thing. Now, how to make them talk through Yokozuna? That’s where it got a bit… interesting. Turns out, it’s all about creating these “indexes” and “schemas”.
I learned that Yokozuna uses Solr schemas to define how data is indexed. So, I needed to tell Yokozuna, “Hey, look at this data in Riak, and index it this way, using this Solr schema.”
I messed with the `riak-admin` command, and used that to create a Yokozuna index. I had to specify a name for the index, and point it to a Solr schema. The schema, I just grabbed one of the default ones that came with Solr, for starters. Gotta keep it simple at first, right?
Putting Data In, Getting Data Out
Right, so I had an index. Now what? Well, I needed some data! I went back to Riak and tossed in some basic key-value pairs. Just some simple stuff, like:
- “book1”: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
- “book2”: “Pride and Prejudice”
- “book3”: “1984”
Now, the tricky part: associating this data with the Yokozuna index. This took me down a rabbit hole of Riak’s “search” features. I discovered that I had to link my Riak bucket (where I stored the data) to my Yokozuna index. It’s like saying, “Hey Riak, when someone searches here, use that Yokozuna index.”
I crafted a few Solr queries, that I can search my data. It felt pretty good. I could search for “Galaxy” and get back “book1”, which felt like a major victory.
Wrapping Up (and What I Learned)
So, that’s the basic gist of my Yokozuna experience. I set up Riak KV and Solr, created a Yokozuna index, shoved some data into Riak, and then used Solr queries through Yokozuna to find that data.
It’s definitely a bit more involved than just using a simple search box. You have to understand how Riak, Solr, and Yokozuna all fit together. But once you get the hang of it, it seems pretty powerful. I can see how this would be useful for searching through tons of data stored in Riak.
My next step? Probably playing with more complex Solr schemas and seeing how I can fine-tune the search results. But for now, I’m calling this a win!
