Unable to retrieve a date field from lucene

Question

I have a Sitecore 8.1 instance running with WeBlog and I want to be able to retrieve the Entry Date fields from Lucene. The Entry Date field is a Date Field.

My custom search result item class is defined like this:

public class BlogEntry: SearchResultItem
{
    [IndexField("entrydate")]
    public DateTime EntryDate { get; set; }
}

After reindexing the field is never populated with the right value when I run the query. Also, I have not created any custom index, I’m using the sitecore_web_index.

This is what my query looks like:

IQueryable<BlogEntry> searchQuery = searchcontext.GetQueryable<BlogEntry>()
    .Where(c => c.TemplateId == new ID("{5FA92FF4-4AC2-48E2-92EB-E1E4914677B0}") 
        && c.Path.Contains(DateTime.Now.Year.ToString()) 
        && c[BuiltinFields.LatestVersion] == "1" 
        && c.Language == Sitecore.Context.Language.CultureInfo.TwoLetterISOLanguageName)

Any thoughts on what I need to change to have this field start populating with its value?

Answer 1

If what Gatogordo is suggesting doesn't work you might want to try adding a second entry in your index configuration with whitespaces because the value of the field may not be stored in the index even though the storage type of the field is set to YES in the configuration due to a known issue with Lucene search provide and fields with whitespaces. More info here.

In your case you want to have in the AddFieldByFieldName section the following:

<field fieldName="entry_date" storageType="YES" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" type="System.DateTime" settingType="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.LuceneSearchFieldConfiguration, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider">
  <analyzer type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.Analyzers.LowerCaseKeywordAnalyzer, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider" />
</field>

<field fieldName="entry date" storageType="YES" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" type="System.String" settingType="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.LuceneSearchFieldConfiguration, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider">
  <analyzer type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.Analyzers.LowerCaseKeywordAnalyzer, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider" />
</field>

Also, don't forget to rebuild your indexes after this change.

Answer 2

You can verify your index with Luke (https://code.google.com/archive/p/luke/).

If you do, I think you wil notice that your entrydate field is in the index but not stored (storageType=NO) meaning that you can search on the field but not get the original value.

If this is indeed the case, you need to add your field to the index definition as stored. As you are using the default index, you need to patch the <defaultLuceneIndexConfiguration>.

Add a field to the <fieldMap>, something like:

<field fieldName="XXX" storageType="YES" indexType="TOKENIZED" vectorType="NO" boost="1f" type="System.DateTime"settingType="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.LuceneSearchFieldConfiguration, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider">
   <analyzer type="Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider.Analyzers.LowerCaseKeywordAnalyzer, Sitecore.ContentSearch.LuceneProvider" />
</field>

ps: best to check the config in your solution to have the exact correct syntax for an extra field. Important part is the storageType="YES". This will tell the index to keep the original value available for retrieval.

You can verify all this again in Luke. Check your search logs for the query Sitecore is using. Open the index with Luke and try that query in the Search. Check the results.. to see if fields are stored or not, you can click on a result row to open this in the Documents tab where you get the list of all fields for this document with the "flags". The S flag indicates that the field is stored.