typesense

What is typesense?

Typesense is an open-source, typo-tolerant search engine optimized for instant search-as-you-type experiences and designed to be easy to use and integrate. It provides a simple API for indexing and searching documents, making it suitable for applications that require fast and relevant search results.

What are typesense's main functionalities?

Indexing Documents

This feature allows you to create a schema and index documents into a collection. The code sample demonstrates how to create a client, define a schema, and create a collection in Typesense.

const Typesense = require('typesense');

let client = new Typesense.Client({
  nodes: [{
    host: 'localhost',
    port: '8108',
    protocol: 'http'
  }],
  apiKey: 'xyz',
  connectionTimeoutSeconds: 2
});

let schema = {
  'name': 'companies',
  'fields': [
    {'name': 'company_name', 'type': 'string' },
    {'name': 'num_employees', 'type': 'int32' },
    {'name': 'country', 'type': 'string' }
  ]
};

client.collections().create(schema).then(function(data) {
  console.log(data);
});

Searching Documents

This feature allows you to search for documents within a collection. The code sample demonstrates how to perform a search query on the 'companies' collection, searching by the 'company_name' field.

client.collections('companies').documents().search({
  'q': 'Typesense',
  'query_by': 'company_name'
}).then(function (searchResults) {
  console.log(searchResults);
});

Updating Documents

This feature allows you to update existing documents in a collection. The code sample demonstrates how to update a document with a specific ID in the 'companies' collection.

client.collections('companies').documents('123').update({
  'company_name': 'Typesense Inc.',
  'num_employees': 50,
  'country': 'USA'
}).then(function (data) {
  console.log(data);
});

Deleting Documents

This feature allows you to delete documents from a collection. The code sample demonstrates how to delete a document with a specific ID from the 'companies' collection.

client.collections('companies').documents('123').delete().then(function (data) {
  console.log(data);
});

Other packages similar to typesense

elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine capable of solving a growing number of use cases. It is known for its scalability and flexibility, making it suitable for large-scale search applications. Compared to Typesense, Elasticsearch offers more advanced features and configurations but can be more complex to set up and manage.

algoliasearch

Algolia is a hosted search engine API that provides fast and relevant search results. It is designed for ease of use and quick integration, similar to Typesense. However, Algolia is a commercial product with a pricing model, whereas Typesense is open-source and free to use.

meilisearch

MeiliSearch is an open-source, easy-to-use, and fast search engine. It is designed to provide an instant search experience with minimal configuration. MeiliSearch is similar to Typesense in terms of ease of use and performance, but it has a different set of features and optimizations.

README

typesense-js

Javascript client library for accessing the Typesense HTTP API.

This library can be used both on the server-side and on the client-side. The library's source is in ES6 and during build time, we transpile it to ES5 and generate two artifacts - one that can be used on the server-side and another that uses Browserify and can be used on the client side.

Installation

Option 1: Install via npm

npm install --save typesense

Install peer dependencies:

npm install --save @babel/runtime

Note: @babel/runtime is very a common dependency among many JS libraries. So instead of each library adding it as a dependency independently (which will cause multiple instances of @babel/runtime to be installed increasing bundle size), Babel's recommendation is that the libraries ask users to install it once as a direct dependency, so there's only one copy of @babel/runtime for the entire project. In some cases, your JS framework might already include @babel/runtime as a dependency.

Option 2: Include the minified JS file for use in the browser directly

<script src="dist/typesense.min.js"></script>

or via jsDelivr

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/typesense@1/dist/typesense.min.js"></script>

Usage

Read the documentation here for detailed examples: https://typesense.org/docs/api/

Tests are also a good place to know how the library works internally: test

Note: When using this library in a browser, please be sure to use an API Key that only allows search operations instead of the master API key. See doc/examples/server/keys.js for an example of how to generate a search only API key.

See Configuration.ts for a list of all client configuration options.

Examples

Here are some examples with inline comments that walk you through how to use the client: doc/examples

To run the examples, from the repo root:

npm run typesenseServer
node doc/examples/server/bulkImport.js

GatsbyJS Integration

If you use GatsbyJS for a framework, we have a plugin (that uses typesense-js behind the scenes) to automatically push your site data to Typesense when you build your site. Learn more here.

Firebase Integration

If you use Firebase, we have a Firebase extension (that uses typesense-js behind the scenes) to automatically push your Firestore data to Typesense. Learn more here.

Building UI components

Checkout the Typesense-InstantSearch.js (which uses typesense-js) for UI components you can use to quickly build powerful instant search experiences.

Compatibility

This table refers to server=>client compatibility. Newer versions of the client library maintain backwards compatibility with older versions of the server library.

Typesense Server	typesense-js
>= v27.0.rc20	>= v2.0.0
>= v0.26.0.rc38	>= v1.8.0
>= v0.25.0	>= v1.7.0
>= v0.24.0	>= v1.5.0
>= v0.23.0	>= v1.3.0
>= v0.21.0	>= v0.14.0
>= v0.20.0	>= v0.12.0
>= v0.19.0	>= v0.11.0
>= v0.18.0	>= v0.10.0
>= v0.17.0	>= v0.9.0
>= v0.16.0	>= v0.8.0
>= v0.15.0	>= v0.7.0
>= v0.12.1	>= v0.5.0
>= v0.12.0	>= v0.4.7
<= v0.11	<= v0.3.0

Development

After checking out the repo, run npm install to install dependencies. Then run npm test to run the linter and tests.

To release a new version, we use the np package:

$ npm install --global np
$ np

# Follow instructions that np shows you

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/typesense/typesense-js.