I'm getting a YSOD error when trying to use ContentSearch in Azure PaaS

Question

I'm using Sitecore 8.2 Update 1 as PaaS on Azure. I've added some new code that is giving me a strange error.

Edit: Added more complete code

using (var context = ContentSearchManager.CreateSearchContext(new SitecoreIndexableItem(Sitecore.Context.Item)))
{
    var query = context.GetQueryable<SearchResultItem>()
        .Where(item => item.TemplateId == SitecoreItemIds.ISSUE_TEMPLATE &&
                    item.Path.StartsWith("/sitecore/content/Home/" + issueTypePath))
        .OrderByDescending(item => item["Date"])
        .FirstOrDefault();

        if (query != null)
            return query.GetItem();

        return null;
}

And I'm getting this YSOD error:

Index (EMPTY) was not found

Description: An unhandled exception occurred.

Exception Details: Sitecore.ContentSearch.Exceptions.IndexNotFoundException: Index (EMPTY) was not found

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

I'm using Azure Search as the search provider. This code works on my local machine, but it's not hitting Azure Search.

I have not made any changes to files on Azure that would affect the search.

Answer 1

The issue that I believe you are running into, is that no index is being defined. As part of the Search context, an index has to be identified.

Here's an example query highlighting the index selection:

var index  = ContentSearchManager.GetIndex(“sitecore_web_index”);
using (var searchContext = index.CreateSearchContext())
{
var blogPosts = searchContext.GetQueryable<SearchResultItem>()
.Where(i => i.TemplateName == “Blog Post”);
}

Notice how I'm first defining which index I need to use, and then from the index, creating a search context.

Hopefully this helps you.