algoliasearch

What is algoliasearch?

The algoliasearch npm package is a JavaScript client for Algolia, a hosted search API that provides a fast and accurate search experience for websites and mobile applications. The package allows developers to integrate Algolia's search capabilities into their JavaScript applications, enabling features such as full-text search, faceting, filtering, and geolocation queries.

What are algoliasearch's main functionalities?

Search

Perform a search query on an Algolia index and retrieve the results.

const algoliasearch = require('algoliasearch');
const client = algoliasearch('YourApplicationID', 'YourAdminAPIKey');
const index = client.initIndex('your_index_name');
index.search('query string').then(({ hits }) => {
  console.log(hits);
});

Indexing

Add or update a record in an Algolia index.

const algoliasearch = require('algoliasearch');
const client = algoliasearch('YourApplicationID', 'YourAdminAPIKey');
const index = client.initIndex('your_index_name');
index.saveObject({ objectID: '1', name: 'Foo' }).then(() => {
  console.log('Object indexed');
});

Configure Index Settings

Configure settings of an Algolia index to define ranking, attributes for faceting, etc.

const algoliasearch = require('algoliasearch');
const client = algoliasearch('YourApplicationID', 'YourAdminAPIKey');
const index = client.initIndex('your_index_name');
index.setSettings({
  searchableAttributes: ['name', 'description'],
  customRanking: ['desc(popularity)']
}).then(() => {
  console.log('Settings updated');
});

Manage Indices

List all indices in your Algolia application and manage them.

const algoliasearch = require('algoliasearch');
const client = algoliasearch('YourApplicationID', 'YourAdminAPIKey');
client.listIndices().then(({ items }) => {
  console.log(items);
});

Other packages similar to algoliasearch

elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine capable of solving a growing number of use cases. The elasticsearch npm package is the official Elasticsearch client for Node.js. It provides similar search capabilities but is typically self-hosted, unlike Algolia which is a managed service.

solr-node

Solr-node is a client library for interacting with Apache Solr, which is an open-source search platform. Similar to Algolia, it provides full-text search, but it requires self-hosting and manual scaling, whereas Algolia offers a fully managed service.

typesense

Typesense is an open-source, typo-tolerant search engine that provides a similar developer experience to Algolia. The typesense npm package allows you to integrate Typesense into your JavaScript applications. It is designed to be easy to use and deploy, offering an alternative to Algolia with a focus on simplicity and speed.

README

Algolia Search API Client for Javascript

This Javascript client let you easily use the Algolia Search API in a browser, it is compatible with most browsers:

• Internet Explorer ≥ 8
• Firefox ≥ 3.5
• Google Chrome ≥ 3
• Safari ≥ 4
• Opera ≥ 12
• Opera mobile ≥ 12
• etc.

See this wikipedia page to have more details on supported browsers (we use XDomainRequest for IE8 and IE9).

Algolia Search is a search API that provides hosted full-text, numerical and faceted search. Algolia’s Search API makes it easy to deliver a great search experience in your apps & websites providing:

• REST and JSON-based API
• search among infinite attributes from a single searchbox
• instant-search after each keystroke
• relevance & popularity combination
• typo-tolerance in any language
• faceting
• 99.99% SLA
• first-class data security

Setup

To setup your project, follow these steps:

1. Download the client and add a script include of algoliasearch.min.js
2. Initialize the client with your ApplicationID and API-Key. You can find all of them on your Algolia account.
3. When you use this API client for search on a website, we strongly recommand to use a key with an ACL restricted to "search". You can retrieve one with client.addUserKey(["search"]).

  <script src="algoliasearch.min.js"></script>
  <script>
    client = new AlgoliaSearch('ApplicationID', 'API-Key');
    ...

Quick Start

First, index some data. For example, you can use the command line client quick start to index the 500 contacts sample.

You can then update the example/autocomplete.html file with your ApplicationID, API-Key and index name to test the autocomplete feature. This version is based on typeahead.js version 0.9.3 with a small patch to allow usage of Algolia JS client.

You can also update the example/instantsearch.html file with your ApplicationID, API-Key and index name to test an instant-search example.

General Principle

All API calls will return the result in a callback that takes two arguments:

1. sucess: a boolean that is set to false when an error was found.
2. content: the object containing the answer (if an error was found, you can retrieve the error message in content.message)

Search

To perform a search, you just need to initialize the index and perform a call to the search function.
You can use the following optional arguments:

• page: (integer) Pagination parameter used to select the page to retrieve.
  Page is zero-based and defaults to 0. Thus, to retrieve the 10th page you need to set page=9
• hitsPerPage: (integer) Pagination parameter used to select the number of hits per page. Defaults to 20.
• attributesToRetrieve: a string that contains the list of object attributes you want to retrieve (let you minimize the answer size).
  Attributes are separated with a comma (for example "name,address"), you can also use a string array encoding (for example ["name","address"] ). By default, all attributes are retrieved. You can also use * to retrieve all values when an attributesToRetrieve setting is specified for your index.
• attributesToHighlight: a string that contains the list of attributes you want to highlight according to the query. Attributes are separated by a comma. You can also use a string array encoding (for example ["name","address"]). If an attribute has no match for the query, the raw value is returned. By default all indexed text attributes are highlighted. You can use * if you want to highlight all textual attributes. Numerical attributes are not highlighted. A matchLevel is returned for each highlighted attribute and can contain:
• full: if all the query terms were found in the attribute,
• partial: if only some of the query terms were found,
• none: if none of the query terms were found.
• attributesToSnippet: a string that contains the list of attributes to snippet alongside the number of words to return (syntax is attributeName:nbWords). Attributes are separated by a comma (Example: attributesToSnippet=name:10,content:10).
  You can also use a string array encoding (Example: attributesToSnippet: ["name:10","content:10"]). By default no snippet is computed.
• minWordSizefor1Typo: the minimum number of characters in a query word to accept one typo in this word.
  Defaults to 3.
• minWordSizefor2Typos: the minimum number of characters in a query word to accept two typos in this word.
  Defaults to 7.
• getRankingInfo: if set to 1, the result hits will contain ranking information in _rankingInfo attribute.
• aroundLatLng: search for entries around a given latitude/longitude (specified as two floats separated by a comma).
  For example aroundLatLng=47.316669,5.016670).
  You can specify the maximum distance in meters with the aroundRadius parameter (in meters) and the precision for ranking with aroundPrecision (for example if you set aroundPrecision=100, two objects that are distant of less than 100m will be considered as identical for "geo" ranking parameter).
  At indexing, you should specify geoloc of an object with the _geoloc attribute (in the form {"_geoloc":{"lat":48.853409, "lng":2.348800}})
• insideBoundingBox: search entries inside a given area defined by the two extreme points of a rectangle (defined by 4 floats: p1Lat,p1Lng,p2Lat,p2Lng).
  For example insideBoundingBox=47.3165,4.9665,47.3424,5.0201).
  At indexing, you should specify geoloc of an object with the _geoloc attribute (in the form {"_geoloc":{"lat":48.853409, "lng":2.348800}})
• numericFilters: a string that contains the list of numeric filters you want to apply separated by a comma. The syntax of one filter is attributeName followed by operand followed by value. Supported operands are <, <=, =, > and >=. You can have multiple conditions on one attribute like for example numericFilters=price>100,price<1000. You can also use a string array encoding (for example numericFilters: ["price>100","price<1000"]).
• tagFilters: filter the query by a set of tags. You can AND tags by separating them by commas. To OR tags, you must add parentheses. For example, tags=tag1,(tag2,tag3) means tag1 AND (tag2 OR tag3). You can also use a string array encoding, for example tagFilters: ["tag1",["tag2","tag3"]] means tag1 AND (tag2 OR tag3).
  At indexing, tags should be added in the _tags attribute of objects (for example {"_tags":["tag1","tag2"]}).
• facetFilters: filter the query by a list of facets. Facets are separated by commas and each facet is encoded as attributeName:value. For example: facetFilters=category:Book,author:John%20Doe. You can also use a string array encoding (for example ["category:Book","author:John%20Doe"]).
• facets: List of object attributes that you want to use for faceting.
  Attributes are separated with a comma (for example "category,author" ). You can also use a JSON string array encoding (for example ["category","author"] ). Only attributes that have been added in attributesForFaceting index setting can be used in this parameter. You can also use * to perform faceting on all attributes specified in attributesForFaceting.
• queryType: select how the query words are interpreted, it can be one of the following value:
• prefixAll: all query words are interpreted as prefixes,
• prefixLast: only the last word is interpreted as a prefix (default behavior),
• prefixNone: no query word is interpreted as a prefix. This option is not recommended.
• optionalWords: a string that contains the list of words that should be considered as optional when found in the query. The list of words is comma separated.

index = client.initIndex('contacts');
index.search('query string', function(success, content) {
    for (var h in content.hits) {
        console.log('Hit(' + content.hits[h].objectID + '): ' + content.hits[h].toString());
    }
});

index.search('query string', function(success, content) {
    for (var h in content.hits) {
        console.log('Hit(' + content.hits[h].objectID + '): ' + content.hits[h].toString());
    }
}, {'attributesToRetrieve': 'firstname,lastname', 'hitsPerPage': 50});

The server response will look like:

{
  "hits": [
    {
      "firstname": "Jimmie",
      "lastname": "Barninger",
      "objectID": "433",
      "_highlightResult": {
        "firstname": {
          "value": "<em>Jimmie</em>",
          "matchLevel": "partial"
        },
        "lastname": {
          "value": "Barninger",
          "matchLevel": "none"
        },
        "company": {
          "value": "California <em>Paint</em> & Wlpaper Str",
          "matchLevel": "partial"
        }
      }
    }
  ],
  "page": 0,
  "nbHits": 1,
  "nbPages": 1,
  "hitsPerPage": 20,
  "processingTimeMS": 1,
  "query": "jimmie paint",
  "params": "query=jimmie+paint&atributesToRetrieve=firstname,lastname&hitsPerPage=50"
}

Update the index

The javascript client is dedicated to web apps searching directly from the browser. In some use-cases, it can however be interesting to perform updates to the index directly in javascript, for example in an HTML5 mobile app. Therefore, just as for other languages, the javascript client is able to add, update or delete objects, or to modify index settings.

For more details about updating an index from javascript, have a look at the algoliasearch.js source file to see details about each function.

Note: If you use the javascript client to update the index, you need to specify https as the protocol in the client initialization:

  <script src="algoliasearch.min.js"></script>
  <script>
    client = new AlgoliaSearch('ApplicationID', 'API-Key', 'https');
    ...