Assistance with proper usage of CFINDEX ACTION="STATUS" STATUS="sinfo" COLLECTION="myCollection"

Wolf and others, depite Adobe's reply in the bug tracker (that this will be "fixed"), I will share here why I don't think you'll get what you seek from that cfindex action="status", but I also offer how you may be able to otherwise.

The problem is in the expectation of what this action="status" operation (and the status attribute) should do, but also a failing in both the error message and the docs to help you see this. (And I suspect that's what is "to fix" in the bug report, though obviously they're not telling us clearly, as of this date and your comment about it here today).

Let me explain (and note that I had replied to this thread by email back in Sep, but I am seeing now that somehow it was never posted, and I never got a rejection).

So first, let's be clear: the syntax you're trying is not supported (cfindex with action="status", and the status attribute, and a collection name). I know it's not saying that in the error message, but it should (and we can hope that in the future, it will).

The action="status" that you are using was indeed added in CF10, but if you read the docs for cfindex carefully (https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/cfml-reference/coldfusion-tags/tags-i/cfindex.html), you will see that it's indicated as being used only when ALSO using the attribute type="dih". Look for the phrase, "When type="dih", these actions are used:", and then you'll see "status" listed as an available action.

That refers to "data import handler", another feature whose support was added in CF10--and is only supported in CF Enterprise, Are you using that? If so, then you need that type, and you would also be specifying indexing operations to be performed via dih.

But instead, it sounds like you just want to find out the status of any indexing operations against a collection, regardless of HOW it's being or been indexed? Is that right?

Well, sadly that's not the purpose of that status action, nor the status attribute. If you look at the history section, you see that it was CF7 which had "added the status attribute for the update, refresh, delete, and purge actions." You're not doing any of those operation in this CFINDEX you're doing (with action="status").

Again, I would agree the error message should be made more clear, as could those very docs, both about the discussion of the status attribute and the status action. It's totally understandable how you could have expected it to do what you want, but it does not and will not.

So what can you do, otherwise? I have a couple of possibilities. And I'd love to hear if any may lead you to the info you seek, as it may benefit others seeking it also.

First, if I am right in understanding you want to get the "status" of any possible indexing against a given collection, I will note that you should not expect CFINDEX to do that, because that's a tag to PERFORM index operations. Instead, if there was such a status about the status of a collection, we should expect to find it in the CFCOLLECTION tag. But I can tell you that there's nothing there that will help you. The best you can do is this

<cfcollection action="list" name="sinfo">
<cfdump var="#sinfo#">

But its results are pretty paltry. 

As Eddie pointed out, though, you CAN indeed perform operations against Solr via http (and cfhttp). I know you passed on that idea, fearing you'd need to provide a username and password. To be clear, by default the CF Solr configuration out of the box does not require any such username and password to access it.

And if you had a tool like FusionReactor or the CF 2018 PMT, you could see that whenever ANY cfml tag for solr is executed, it results simply in CF doing an underlying call to the Solr engine. For instance, when running that cfcollection tag above, it results in this URL running (on my machine, where my Solr is implemented by default locally, and enabled via port 8991):

http://localhost:8991/solr/admin/cores?action=STATUS&indexInfo=true&wt=xml&version=2.2

You will see that it returns XML. (And the wt arg could be changed to json to return that format instead). And the result it returns is q good bit more info than CFCOLLECTION itself returned...but I can tell you I don't see any info that suggests the status of index operations, but I don't have any running. Maybe you would see something different if you did.

Also, FWIW, you can just use the URL as simply:

http://localhost:8991/solr/

(again for whatever is the right servername and port where your Solr is installed), and that will present a UI where you can see many things about your Solr setup, and note on the left the drop-down labelled "cores". Those are your collections, and you can see more on each.

And whil I still don't see something that will talk about the state of currently running index operations, it may be there if you have one running. And note on the left the "query" option, where you can do quite a few things against a given collection. For those who discover this and just want to use it to look at all data in a given collection, you can. And note that it not only lets you build the query, and shows the results (in that UI), but it also shows at the top (of the UI) the URL that you could use to get that info yourself, which you could run in a browser or via a cfhttp, such as this whatever is yourcollectionname:

http://localhost:8991/solr/yourcollectionname/select?q=*:*

I know that went on well beyond just answering your question about the problem with your attempted use of cfiindex action="status", but I hope it gives better insight into what you may look to given that that will likely NEVER be fixed to do what you expect (again, that's not the right job for cfindex, which is to perform an index operation, not report its status--unless and only if you are using that particular data import handler as the indexing operation).

I will add a pointer to this comment in the bug tracker, if it may help others there (and they will see any replies, if anyone thinks I am mistaken in my assertions here).