Drupal 7 Views with Faceted Filters, without ApacheSolr
Search facets and filtering are a great way to guide your user to the information they are looking for. With facets, we can create an intuitive way for users to narrow down the items that are visible on the screen. Drupal’s core search capability does not provide a way to implement facets, so we need to look at contributed modules to achieve this. In Drupal 6, we would reach for the Apache Solr Search module. This is a great, high performance solution, but it has it’s drawbacks. Installing Solr on your web server can be tricky, and with most shared hosting accounts not even permitted. Fortunately, with Drupal 7 and a few API modules, we can incorporate these wonderful little facets without the need for a full-blown Solr setup. (more…)