In my last post, I showed a method for conditionally displaying facet blocks with Search Lucene, depending on the type of query being performed.  This can also be adapted to work for Apache Solr, albeit with a different mechanism. The easiest way to do this with Apache Solr is to use the Context module to control which facet blocks are displayed, along with when and where they are displayed.  In this example, I set up a context based on path, where that path was search/apachesolr/*.  I then added all of my Apache Solr facet blocks in the context. With the context configured, I now have the ability to alter that context on the fly, based on whatever conditions I choose. 

 In this example, I get all of the active contexts, and if my apachesolr-search context is in effect, I look at the current Apache  Solr query to see what filters have been applied.  In the example, a flag is set to show the biblio facets if the current search is filtering by the biblio content type. There may be other methods for displaying facets conditionally in Apache Solr; however, I find this method to be fairly straightforward, and if you're not currently using Context for controlling block placement in Drupal, you should definitely reconsider that decision.

I recently worked on a project in Drupal that called for a large number of taxonomy terms. I needed to put the terms in a specific order, but unfortunately, I had more terms than Drupal's weight field supports, which is a range from -10 to +10.

I did a quick search on Drupal, and was horrified to see how many people are hacking core to add a greater range. This is pretty easy to do without hacking core.

On my latest project, I was faced with a challenge: build Flash widgets that displayed dynamic data and could be embedded on any web page. Phase two of the widgets called for user interaction with the widget, as opposed to simply displaying content.

Drupal is incredibly flexible, but in current versions, lacks the ability to export content easily in the form of widgets. However, the Services module gives you that flexibility in a very easy to use manner.

Services allows you to expose pieces of your Drupal site, such as user, node, and views methods.

I recently built an RSS feed for work, and noticed that in IE 7, the RSS toolbar button was not lit up. A little research on the Microsoft Team RSS blog showed me the solution.

Frequently asked questions

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Installation instructions
The following document outlines the process of installation of AJAXExtended to you web server. Please note, however, that in order to use these instructions, you should have some basic server administration skills. Be sure, you're comfortable with terms like file permissions, scripts, cgi-bin, sockets etc.
1. Downloading the latest copy
AJAXExtended is stored in a Subversion repository at http://www.professionalconsulting.ru/svn/ajaxextended/trunk.

What is AJAXExtended?
AJAXExtended is a JS/server library that make cross-domain AJAX requests possible. It does not use any proprietary methods or security holes — it relies on a server-side proxy to fetch data from any 3rd party server.

Although a server proxy might seem a bit obvious and a way-too-simple solution, it's a bit more complicated than it seems. To emulate a cross-domain XMLHTTPRequest, a server proxy should support HTTP headers (including cookies), HTTP authentication, data re-encoding and more.