Custom Azure Search Index returns '&search=This_Is_Equal_ConstNode_Return_Nothing' for searches

Question

I have setup an custom Azure Search index in Sitecore 8.2 u7 and was getting no results returned even though I have data in it (I can see the data in the Azure console). Looking in the Sitecore Search logs I can see the following error:

8960 15:19:22 INFO AzureSearch Query [custom-azure-web-index]: &search=This_Is_Equal_ConstNode_Return_Nothing

This isn't a very useful error message.

Answer 1

I figured this out in the end. Googling didn't give me any results regarding a custom Azure index but it did give me some ideas on what might be up:

Experience Analytics are not showing Online Interactions

https://devsencore.wordpress.com/tag/azure-search/

These links mentioned issues with configuration.

It turned out to be a problem with how one of my custom fields was configured in my Azure indexConfiguration file. e.g

<field fieldName="customfield" cloudFieldName="customfield" searchable="YES" retrievable="YES" facetable="YES" filterable="YES" sortable="YES" boost="4f" type="System.String" settingType="Sitecore.ContentSearch.Azure.CloudSearchFieldConfiguration, Sitecore.ContentSearch.Azure" cloudAnalyzer="language" />

If you have this issue things to check in your config are:

1. Check your field types are of the correct types - and that you are mapping them to the correct Azure Field types.
2. Check your cloudFieldName is in the right format for each field - It can only The first character must be a letter. it can only contain letters, numbers, and underscores.
3. Check your settingType is correct

More info here: https://doc.sitecore.com/developers/82/sitecore-experience-platform/en/configure-azure-search.html