If you’re ever in the need of checking if a variable in bash contains a certain string (and is not equal to, just a part of), the =~ operator to the test function comes in very handy. =~ is usually used to compare a variable against a regular expression, but can also be used for substrings (you may also use == *str*, but I prefer this way).
This short example submits a document to solr using curl, then emails the result if the Solr server responded with an error (.. I tried mapping this against the error code or something similiar instead, but didn’t find a better way. If you have something better, please leave a comment!):
CURLRESULT=`cat $i | curl -s -X POST -H 'Content-Type: text/xml' -d @- $URL`
if [[ $CURLRESULT =~ "Error report" ]]
then
echo "Error!! Error!! CRISIS IMMINENT!!"
echo $CURLRESULT | mail -s "Error importing to SOLR" mail@example.com
exit
fi
Neat to check that everything went OK before you remove the files you’ve submitted.