Algolia Search API Client for JavaScript
We recently (March 2015) released a new version (V3) of our JavaScript client,
if you were using our previous version (V2), read the migration guide
Algolia Search is a hosted full-text, numerical, and faceted search engine capable of delivering realtime results from the first keystroke.
The JavaScript client lets you easily use the Algolia Search API in a browser.
It is dedicated to web apps searching directly from the browser.
To add, remove or delete your objects please consider using a backend API client.
Our JavaScript library is UMD compatible, you can
use it with any module loader.
When not using any module loader, it will export an algoliasearch
method in the window
object.
If you are using the V2 of our JavaScript client and want to upgrade, please read our migration guide.
Table of Contents
Getting Started
- Setup
- Quick Start
- Callback convention
- Promises
- Request strategy
- Cache
- Online documentation
- Tutorials
Commands Reference
- Search
- Multiple queries
- Get an object
- Security
Setup
To setup your project, follow these steps:
npm
npm install algoliasearch --save
We are browserifyable and webpack friendly.
Bower
bower install algoliasearch -S
jsDelivr
jsDelivr is a global CDN delivery for JavaScript libraries.
You can always get the latest, backward compatible version by including:
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/algoliasearch/3/algoliasearch.min.js"></script>
Example
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/algoliasearch/3/algoliasearch.min.js"></script>
<script>
var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'Search-Only-API-Key');
var index = client.initIndex('indexName');
index.search('an example', function searchDone(err, content) {
console.log(err, content)
});
index.search('another example')
.then(function searchSuccess(content) {
console.log(content);
})
.catch(function searchFailure(err) {
console.error(err);
});
</script>
Have a look at our callback convention, read about our promises.
jQuery
We provide a specific jQuery build that will use jQuery.ajax.
It can be used with callbacks or jQuery promises.
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/jquery/2.1.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/algoliasearch/3/algoliasearch.jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
var client = $.algolia.Client('ApplicationID', 'Search-Only-API-Key');
var index = client.initIndex('indexName');
index.search('something', function searchDone(err, content) {
console.log(err, content)
});
</script>
Angular.js
We provide a specific AngularJS build that is using the $http service.
It can be used with callbacks or AngularJS promises.
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/angularjs/1.3.14/angular.min.js"></script>
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/algoliasearch/3/algoliasearch.angular.min.js"></script>
<script>
angular
.module('myapp', ['algoliasearch'])
.controller('SearchCtrl', ['$scope', 'algolia', function($scope, algolia) {
$scope.query = '';
$scope.hits = [];
var client = algolia.Client('ApplicationID', 'Search-Only-API-Key');
var index = client.initIndex('indexName');
index.search('something')
.then(function searchSuccess(content) {
console.log(content);
}, function searchFailure(err) {
console.log(err);
});
}]);
</script>
Browserify
npm install algoliasearch --save
var algoliasearch = require('algoliasearch');
var client = algoliasearch('applicationID', 'Search-Only-API-Key');
var index = client.initIndex('indexName');
index.search('something', function searchDone(err, content) {
console.log(err, content);
});
We also provide runnable examples for you to try.
Quick Start
We have easy to run examples for you to try. First, setup the repository:
git clone https://github.com/algolia/algoliasearch-client-js.git
cd algoliasearch-client-js
npm install
npm run examples
Then open either:
To hack and use your own indexes and data, open one of the example file and replace:
var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'Search-Only-API-Key');
var index = client.initIndex(indexName);
Callback convention
All API calls will return the result in a callback that takes two arguments:
- error: null or an Error object. More info on the error can be find in
error.message
. - content: the object containing the answer
We follow the error-first callback.
Promises
If you do not provide a callback, you will get a promise (but never both).
Promises are the native Promise implementation.
We use jakearchibald/es6-promise as a polyfill when needed.
Request strategy
The request strategy used by the JavaScript client includes:
- CORS for modern browsers
- XDomainRequest for IE <= 10
- JSONP in any situation where Ajax requests are unavailabe or blocked.
Cache
Queries will be stored in a cache
inside your JavaScript Index
and AlgoliaSearch
objects to avoid performing the same API calls twice. It's particularly useful when your users are deleting characters or words from the current query but has a chance of ending up with outdated results if the page isn't refreshed for some time.
To address this issue, be sure to clear the cache every X minutes to ensure you have up to date results:
index.clearCache();
client.clearCache();
Documentation
Check our online documentation:
Tutorials
Check out our tutorials:
Commands Reference
Search
To perform a search, you only need to initialize the index and perform a call to the search function.
You can use the following optional arguments:
Query Parameters
Full Text Search Parameters
- query: (string) The instant search query string. All words of the query are interpreted as prefixes (for example "John Mc" will match "John Mccamey" and "Johnathan Mccamey"). If no query parameter is set all objects are retrieved.
- queryType: Selects how the query words are interpreted. It can be one of the following values:
- 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.
- removeWordsIfNoResults: This option is used to select a strategy in order to avoid having an empty result page. There are three different options:
- lastWords: When a query does not return any results, the last word will be added as optional. The process is repeated with n-1 word, n-2 word, ... until there are results.
- firstWords: When a query does not return any results, the first word will be added as optional. The process is repeated with second word, third word, ... until there are results.
- allOptional: When a query does not return any results, a second trial will be made with all words as optional. This is equivalent to transforming the AND operand between query terms to an OR operand.
- none: No specific processing is done when a query does not return any results (default behavior).
- minWordSizefor1Typo: The minimum number of characters in a query word to accept one typo in this word.
Defaults to 4. - minWordSizefor2Typos: The minimum number of characters in a query word to accept two typos in this word.
Defaults to 8. - allowTyposOnNumericTokens: If set to false, it disables typo tolerance on numeric tokens (numbers). Defaults to false.
- typoTolerance: This option allows you to control the number of typos in the result set:
- true: The typo tolerance is enabled and all matching hits are retrieved (default behavior).
- false: The typo tolerance is disabled. For example, if one result matches without typos, then all results with typos will be hidden.
- min: Only keep results with the minimum number of typos.
- strict: Hits matching with 2 typos are not retrieved if there are some matching without typos. This option is useful if you want to avoid false positives as much as possible.
- allowTyposOnNumericTokens: If set to false, disables typo tolerance on numeric tokens (numbers). Defaults to true.
- ignorePlural: If set to true, plural won't be considered as a typo. For example, car and cars will be considered as equals. Defaults to false.
- restrictSearchableAttributes List of attributes you want to use for textual search (must be a subset of the
attributesToIndex
index setting). Attributes are separated with a comma such as "name,address"
. You can also use JSON string array encoding such as encodeURIComponent("[\"name\",\"address\"]")
. By default, all attributes specified in attributesToIndex
settings are used to search. - advancedSyntax: Enables the advanced query syntax. Defaults to 0 (false).
- Phrase query: A phrase query defines a particular sequence of terms. A phrase query is built by Algolia's query parser for words surrounded by
"
. For example, "search engine"
will retrieve records having search
next to engine
only. Typo tolerance is disabled on phrase queries. - Prohibit operator: The prohibit operator excludes records that contain the term after the
-
symbol. For example, search -engine
will retrieve records containing search
but not engine
.
- analytics: If set to false, this query will not be taken into account in the analytics feature. Defaults to true.
- synonyms: If set to false, this query will not use synonyms defined in the configuration. Defaults to true.
- replaceSynonymsInHighlight: If set to false, words matched via synonym expansion will not be replaced by the matched synonym in the highlight results. Defaults to true.
- optionalWords: A string that contains the comma separated list of words that should be considered as optional when found in the query.
- 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.
Geo-search Parameters
-
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 and the precision for ranking with aroundPrecision. For example, if you set aroundPrecision=100, two objects that are a distance of less than 100 meters will be considered as identical for the "geo" ranking parameter).
At indexing, you should specify the geo location of an object with the _geoloc
attribute in the form {"_geoloc":{"lat":48.853409, "lng":2.348800}}
.
-
aroundLatLngViaIP: Search for entries around a given latitude/longitude automatically computed from user IP address.
For example, aroundLatLng=47.316669,5.016670
.
You can specify the maximum distance in meters with the aroundRadius parameter and the precision for ranking with aroundPrecision. For example, if you set aroundPrecision=100, two objects that are a distance of less than 100 meters will be considered as identical for the "geo" ranking parameter.
At indexing, you should specify the geo location 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 the geo location of an object with the _geoloc attribute in the form {"_geoloc":{"lat":48.853409, "lng":2.348800}}
.
Parameters to Control Results Content
- attributesToRetrieve: A string that contains the list of object attributes you want to retrieve in order to 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 commas. 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 commas (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. - getRankingInfo: If set to 1, the result hits will contain ranking information in the _rankingInfo attribute.
Numeric Search Parameters
- numericFilters: A string that contains the comma separated list of numeric filters you want to apply. The filter syntax is
attributeName
followed by operand
followed by value
. Supported operands are <
, <=
, =
, >
and >=
.
You can easily perform range queries via the :
operator. This is equivalent to combining a >=
and <=
operand. For example, numericFilters=price:10 to 1000
.
You can also mix OR and AND operators. The OR operator is defined with a parenthesis syntax. For example, (code=1 AND (price:[0-100] OR price:[1000-2000]))
translates to encodeURIComponent("code=1,(price:0 to 10,price:1000 to 2000)")
.
You can also use a string array encoding (for example numericFilters: ["price>100","price<1000"]
).
Category Search Parameters
- tagFilters: Filter the query by a set of tags. You can AND tags by separating them with 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"]}
.
Faceting Parameters
- facetFilters: Filter the query with a list of facets. Facets are separated by commas and is encoded as
attributeName:value
. To OR facets, you must add parentheses. For example: facetFilters=(category:Book,category:Movie),author:John%20Doe
. You can also use a string array encoding. For example, [["category:Book","category:Movie"],"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 JSON string array encoding. For example, ["category","author"]
. Only the 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. - maxValuesPerFacet: Limit the number of facet values returned for each facet. For example,
maxValuesPerFacet=10
will retrieve a maximum of 10 values per facet.
Distinct Parameter
- distinct: If set to 1, enables the distinct feature, disabled by default, if the
attributeForDistinct
index setting is set. This feature is similar to the SQL "distinct" keyword. When enabled in a query with the distinct=1
parameter, all hits containing a duplicate value for the attributeForDistinct attribute are removed from results. For example, if the chosen attribute is show_name
and several hits have the same value for show_name
, then only the best one is kept and the others are removed.
Note: This feature is disabled if the query string is empty and there aren't any tagFilters
, facetFilters
, nor numericFilters
parameters.
var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'Search-Only-API-Key');
var index = client.initIndex('indexName');
index.search('query string', function searchDone(err, content) {
if (err) {
console.error(err);
return;
}
for (var h in content.hits) {
console.log('Hit(' + content.hits[h].objectID + '): ' + content.hits[h].toString());
}
});
index.search(
'query string', {
attributesToRetrieve: ['firstname', 'lastname'],
hitsPerPage: 50
},
function searchDone(err, content) {
if (err) {
console.error(err);
return;
}
for (var h in content.hits) {
console.log('Hit(' + content.hits[h].objectID + '): ' + content.hits[h].toString());
}
}
);
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&attributesToRetrieve=firstname,lastname&hitsPerPage=50"
}
Multiple queries
You can send multiple queries with a single API call using a batch of queries:
var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'Search-Only-API-Key');
client.startQueriesBatch();
client.addQueryInBatch(
'categories',
'search in categories index', {
hitsPerPage: 3
}
);
client.addQueryInBatch(
'products',
'first search in products', {
hitsPerPage: 3,
tagFilters: 'promotion'
}
);
client.addQueryInBatch(
'products',
'another search in products', {
hitsPerPage: 10
}
);
client.sendQueriesBatch(searchMultiCallback);
function searchMultiCallback(err, content) {
if (err) {
console.error(err);
return;
}
var categories = content.results[0];
for (var i = 0; i < categories.hits.length; ++i) {
console.log(categories.hits[i]);
}
var products_promotion = content.results[1];
for (var i = 0; i < products_promotion.hits.length; ++i) {
console.log(products_promotion.hits[i]);
}
var products = content.results[2];
for (var i = 0; i < products.hits.length; ++i) {
console.log(products.hits[i]);
}
}
Get an object
You can easily retrieve an object using its objectID
and optionally specify a comma separated list of attributes you want:
var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'Search-Only-API-Key');
var index = client.initIndex('indexName');
index.getObject('myID', function searchDone(err, content) {
if (err) {
console.error(err);
return;
}
console.log(content.objectID + ": ", content);
});
index.getObject('myID', ['firstname', 'lastname'], function searchDone(err, content) {
if (err) {
console.error(err);
return;
}
console.log(content.objectID + ": ", content);
});
You can also retrieve a set of objects:
Security
If you're using Per-User security keys, you need to set the associated tags
:
var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'YourPublicSecuredAPIKey');
client.setSecurityTags('(public,user_42)');
// If you've specified a userToken
while generating your secured API key, you must also specified it at query-time:
var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'YourPublicSecuredAPIKey');
client.setSecurityTags('(public,user_42)');
client.setUserToken('user_42');
Updating the index
In some use cases, such as an HTML5 mobile application, it may be necessary to perform updates to the index directly in JavaScript.
Therefore, just like other languages, the JavaScript client is able to add, update, delete objects and modify index settings.
If you use the JavaScript client to update the index and if you are not on an https:
website already, you must force the client to use https:
:
<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/algoliasearch/3/algoliasearch.min.js"></script>
<script>
var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'API-Key', {protocol: 'https:'});
</script>