No results for Smart Search on MVC

Hi Petline,

Just a few hunches:

• Is the Web Farm module show that Admin app and MVC app are both healthy?
• Is this setting checked? Version & Synchronization->Web farm>Smart search indexes
• Does the app identity for the MVC app have the required permissions to write files?

Mike

I hope it is ok for me to join this thread as I came here to solve the same problem I am having using Smart Search with Kentico 11 MVC.

I followed Providing smart search on MVC sites

• The Web farm module shows both MVC and Admin apps as healthy.
• Settings> Version & Synchronization->Web farm>Smart search indexes is checked.
• Files are being created in Kentico11\CMS\App_Data\CMSModules\SmartSearch\MVCSite.Index

Search Preview returns results.

I just don't know where else to look and would appreciate some help.

Tim

Hi Tim,

Is your MVCSite.Index also in this folder in the MVC application?

~/App_Data/CMSModules/SmartSearch/

I would expect Web Farm Tasks to synchronize the index files from the CMS app to the MVC app.

You could also check:

• Are there any relevant tasks listed in the Web Farm module's Tasks tab?
• Is the Kentico.Search NuGet package added to your MVC project?

Mike

Hi Mike

Thank you for your response.

As a quick test I manually copied the SmartSearch Folder to ~/App_Data/CMSModules/SmartSearch/ which was missing.

I am now getting some results returned in my MVC app, so thank you.

I just need to diagnose why the folder is not being synced there in the first place. The Task list is empty in the Web Farm modules tab. So I imagine my problem is around this area.

I did not use the Kentico.Search package, I did write my own based on the code from there however.

Hi Tim,

I faced similar problem and in my case the index files were missing because web application didn't have "write" access to App_Data folder so souldn't just create these files.

Thanks Dmitry, the permissions look ok to me, but I am not a Windows person or even a .NET dev, but I will investigate it further.

Tim,

My Web Farm task list is empty too, but the index files still propagated.

Did you try turning on "Enable web farm debug"? In Settings, I went to System->Debug, and turned on:

• Enable web farm debug
• Log web farm operations to file

Kentico created "logWebFarm.log" in ~\App_Data\CMSTemp\Debug. Maybe this will provide a clue.

Also, are you using any storage providers other than the default, like AzureStorage?

Mike

Thanks Mike. I have enabled logging and the log files are being created. I will see what I can learn from them.

I suspect my sync problem is caused by write permissions. (Edit: I have rectified my problem by setting the permissions on the folder, Thank you)

I am using local file storage.

Thanks Mike for getting back to me, sorry my late reply. So all checks for healthy webfarm are good.

Only thing I am not clear about is "MVCSite.Index", do I need to create this file under the MVC app solution (not the website) ?

Hi Petline,

You do not need to create a file or folder named MVCSite.Index. That just happened to be the code name for Tim's index. A folder for each index should automatically be created under ~/App_Data/CMSModules/SmartSearch/.

Mike

Thanks Mike, so the issue still exist, no results on my MVC site, but when I try the preview search it works and return values, any advise ?

Did you configure Webfarm debugging as described above? This helped Tim identify a permissions issue.