Apache Solr and Drupal - Part II: How to set up Drupal and Solr to search in attachments

This guide is based on Drupal 7 with Search API 7.x-1.1.3, Solr search 7.x-1.6, Search views 7.x-1.13, Search API attachments 7.x-1.4 and Views 7.x-3.8
 

1. Install Solr
   If you haven't installed Solr yet, check our blog post how to set up easily a basic Solr service on your *nix system or read the official instructions how you can do it.
    
2. Install Drupal modules
   Install and enable the following modules:
   • Search API
   • Search API Views (bundled with Search API
   • Search API Solr Search
   • Search API attachments
   • Views
      
3. Download tika
   Download the Tika app .jar file (tika-app-1.6.jar as per the time of this post), and copy it to
    

   sites/all/libraries/tika

   
   , or in case you build your site as an install profile, copy it to
    

   profiles/{my_profile}/libraries/tika

   
   . Be sure that you have the java JDK installed. If you use Ubuntu like I do, you can read here the "Installing default JRE/JDK" section for further info. Important: Once you have downloaded the .jar file, you may need to adjust its permissions.
    
4. Set up Search API
   Once you are done go to
    

   admin/config/search/search_api

    
   • Add a new server.
   • Add an index to the newly created server.
     • On Filters tab enable File attachments:
   • On Fields tab select the desired fields to be indexed:
   • Open the Search API Attachments tab, select Tika Extraction method and fill in the Tika Extraction Settings section. Save configuration when you are done.
      
5. Create a view Go to
    

   admin/structure/views

   
   and add a new view.
   • From Show list select your index created earlier.
   • For display format you might select rendered entity.
   • Click Continue & edit.
   • At Filter Criteria section set up your filter.
   • Check "Expose this filter to visitors" and select the Searched fields from the list.
      

And basically that's it. Congratulations, you have just set up a full text search for attached files.