Having an issue using Elasticsearch

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Adsy
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Posts: 41
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 5:52 pm
Location: Brisbane, Australia

Having an issue using Elasticsearch

Post by Adsy »

I have recently upgraded to 2018 and converting my tripane to a Side Nav output. Everything is working great, except I cannot build with Elasticsearch enabled. Project builds fine when using MadCap search.

I got an error that told me I need to install Java Development Kit 1.8, which is downloadable from https://www.madcapsoftware.com/downloads/jdk.aspx. When you visit that site, you're automatically redirected to http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/ ... 33151.html.

Now, first issue is that on this page, there is not one mention that I can see anywhere of 1.8. So I downloaded Java SE Development Kit 8u172, which I assume should work.

I installed Java, tried to build again and got the same error. I'm going to try a restart and see if that helps, I'll come back and update. Has anyone else experienced this issue?
Adsy
Propeller Head
Posts: 41
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 5:52 pm
Location: Brisbane, Australia

Re: Having an issue using Elasticsearch

Post by Adsy »

Restarted the PC and have still had no luck getting it to build with ES.

Right at the end of the compile is where it is having an issue, and it looks like it isn't connecting somehow. It's all over my head at this point. How do i get it to connect, or is it a firewall issue? Where I can I find out details to get it to connect?
Output generated in 39 second(s).

Publishing Elasticsearch data to localhost...

Connecting...

Build failed: Java Development Kit (JDK) version 1.8 is required to build targets using Elasticsearch. You may download it here: https://www.madcapsoftware.com/downloads/jdk.aspx
Tried to find the answer, and I got this... Your search for "elasticsearch" returned 0 result(s).
Psider
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Posts: 811
Joined: Wed Jul 06, 2011 1:32 am

Re: Having an issue using Elasticsearch

Post by Psider »

It's possible it's a firewall issue.

This topic mentions that elasticsearch relies on two web services, so I can imagine they need to go out to the internet to grab data/thingies (technical term, that :p )
http://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare201 ... search.htm

Step 5 in "General steps" indicates you get an icon for one of the web services at the end of generating, which handles the web services when running locally (I assume running the help for testing). It also sounds like you need to manually kill the process (http://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare201 ... anager.htm ) although I'm not sure if it means every time you generate, or only for troubleshooting whatever that entails.

I couldn't find any mention about special internet access, but maybe this can guide your IT guys.


EDIT: I forgot to mention, Java SE 8 is the public name of the developer version 1.8.
roboHAL
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Posts: 254
Joined: Mon Dec 31, 2012 9:57 am

Re: Having an issue using Elasticsearch

Post by roboHAL »

I have familiarity using Zendesk, which utilizes elasticsearch. If the elasticsearch in flare works anything like it does in Zendesk, I'd avoid it. Here are the issues I've found. Frankly, these are show stoppers. :x

- only uni-directional stemming is supported (i.e. "cancel" finds "cancel" and "canceling", however, "canceling" only finds "canceling" and does NOT find "cancel")

- synonyms are not supported (i.e. searching for "edit" cannot return articles with "modify")

- does not support Boolean logic (i.e. the first two words are treated as an AND condition, after two words some cockamamie logic is used).

There are more issues....

Again, this is my experience with Zendesk. I have no clue whether or not Flare elasticsearch will "work" the same. I'd actually be appreciative of gaining insight from others as this thread develops.

Thanks everyone. :) 8)
rogersm
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Joined: Fri Nov 07, 2014 4:29 am

Re: Having an issue using Elasticsearch

Post by rogersm »

I was looking forward to being able to implement ElasticSearch, but because it does not work on the Edge browser by default currently (unless users run a command from the command line), it is not something we can deliver to our customers unfortunately.
JRtechw
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Joined: Thu Oct 05, 2017 8:08 pm

Re: Having an issue using Elasticsearch

Post by JRtechw »

No support on Edge without user intervention is very disappointing, even if it looks like it's a Windows 10 glitch rather than ElasticSearch. That, plus no synonyms and no filters means we can't move to this search engine yet either.

If you could only actually attach a search filter to a Search skin, instead of one global filter applied all-or-nothing to the entire top nav output, this would at least go some way toward narrowing search results without users having to do much work.
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