Typesense Instantsearch Adapter

An adapter to use the awesome Instantsearch.js library with a Typesense Search Server, to build rich search interfaces.

Here is an example of UI you can build with this adapater: songs-search.typesense.org

Note: If your search interface is built on a custom autocomplete component, or is based on @algolia/autocomplete-js, then you don't need this adapter to use it with Typesense, as typesense-js library already supports client-side fetching data from any async data sources. Read more here.

Quick Links

• Background
• Quick Start
  • Starter App
• Installation
• Usage
  • With instantsearch.js
  • With react-instantsearch (also works with React Native)
  • With vue-instantsearch
  • With angular-instantsearch
• Widget Specific Instructions
• Compatibility
• Development
• Help

Background

The good folks over at Algolia have built and open-sourced Instantsearch.js which is a collection of out-of-the-box components that you can use to build interactive search experiences swiftly.

With the adapter in this repository, you'll be able to use Instantsearch (and its React, Vue and Angular cousins) with data indexed in a Typesense search server.

If you haven't used Instantsearch before, we recommend going through their Getting Started guide here. Once you go through the guide, follow the instructions below to plug the Typesense adapter into Instantsearch.

Quick Start

Here's a guide on building a quick search interface with Typesense and InstantSearch.js: https://typesense.org/docs/0.20.0/guide/search-ui-components.html

Starter App

Here's a demo starter app that shows you how to use the adapter: https://github.com/typesense/typesense-instantsearch-demo

Installation

$ npm install --save typesense-instantsearch-adapter @babel/runtime

or

$ yarn add typesense-instantsearch-adapter @babel/runtime

or, you can also directly include the adapter via a script tag in your HTML:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/typesense-instantsearch-adapter@2/dist/typesense-instantsearch-adapter.min.js"></script>

<!-- You might want to pin the version of the adapter used if you don't want to always receive the latest minor version -->

Since this is an adapter, it will not install the Instantsearch library automatically for you. You need to install one of the following in your application directly:

• instantsearch.js
• react-instantsearch
• vue-instantsearch
• angular-instantsearch

You'll find information on how to get started with each of the above libraries in their respective repos.

We'd also recommend checking out create-instantsearch-app to create your Search UI from a starter template.

Usage

With instantsearch.js

import instantsearch from "instantsearch.js";
import { searchBox, hits } from "instantsearch.js/es/widgets";
import TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter from "typesense-instantsearch-adapter";

const typesenseInstantsearchAdapter = new TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter({
  server: {
    apiKey: "abcd", // Be sure to use an API key that only allows search operations
    nodes: [
      {
        host: "localhost",
        path: "", // Optional. Example: If you have your typesense mounted in localhost:8108/typesense, path should be equal to '/typesense'
        port: "8108",
        protocol: "http",
      },
    ],
    cacheSearchResultsForSeconds: 2 * 60, // Cache search results from server. Defaults to 2 minutes. Set to 0 to disable caching.
  },
  // The following parameters are directly passed to Typesense's search API endpoint.
  //  So you can pass any parameters supported by the search endpoint below.
  //  query_by is required.
  additionalSearchParameters: {
    query_by: "name,description,categories",
  },
});
const searchClient = typesenseInstantsearchAdapter.searchClient;

const search = instantsearch({
  searchClient,
  indexName: "products",
});
search.addWidgets([
  searchBox({
    container: "#searchbox",
  }),
  hits({
    container: "#hits",
    templates: {
      item: `
        <div class="hit-name">
          {{#helpers.highlight}}{ "attribute": "name" }{{/helpers.highlight}}
        </div>
      `,
    },
  }),
]);

search.start();

You can add any of the Instantsearch widgets here that are supported by the adapter.

You'll also find a working example in test/support/testground. To run it, run npm run testground from the project root folder.

With react-instantsearch

import React from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";
import { SearchBox } from "react-instantsearch-dom";
import TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter from "typesense-instantsearch-adapter";

const typesenseInstantsearchAdapter = new TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter({
  server: {
    apiKey: "abcd", // Be sure to use an API key that only allows search operations
    nodes: [
      {
        host: "localhost",
        port: "8108",
        path: "", // Optional. Example: If you have your typesense mounted in localhost:8108/typesense, path should be equal to '/typesense'
        protocol: "http",
      },
    ],
    cacheSearchResultsForSeconds: 2 * 60, // Cache search results from server. Defaults to 2 minutes. Set to 0 to disable caching.
  },
  // The following parameters are directly passed to Typesense's search API endpoint.
  //  So you can pass any parameters supported by the search endpoint below.
  //  query_by is required.
  additionalSearchParameters: {
    query_by: "name,description,categories",
  },
});
const searchClient = typesenseInstantsearchAdapter.searchClient;

const App = () => (
  <InstantSearch indexName="products" searchClient={searchClient}>
    <SearchBox />
    <Hits />
  </InstantSearch>
);

You can then add any of the Instantsearch-React widgets here that are supported by the adapter.

The instructions above also apply to React Native.

With vue-instantsearch

App.vue:

<template>
  <ais-instant-search :search-client="searchClient" index-name="products">
    <ais-search-box />
    <ais-hits>
      <div slot="item" slot-scope="{ item }">
        <h2>{{ item.name }}</h2>
      </div>
    </ais-hits>
  </ais-instant-search>
</template>

<script>
import TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter from "typesense-instantsearch-adapter";

const typesenseInstantsearchAdapter = new TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter({
  server: {
    apiKey: "abcd", // Be sure to use an API key that only allows search operations
    nodes: [
      {
        host: "localhost",
        path: "", // Optional. Example: If you have your typesense mounted in localhost:8108/typesense, path should be equal to '/typesense'
        port: "8108",
        protocol: "http",
      },
    ],
    cacheSearchResultsForSeconds: 2 * 60, // Cache search results from server. Defaults to 2 minutes. Set to 0 to disable caching.
  },
  // The following parameters are directly passed to Typesense's search API endpoint.
  //  So you can pass any parameters supported by the search endpoint below.
  //  query_by is required.
  additionalSearchParameters: {
    query_by: "name,description,categories",
  },
});
const searchClient = typesenseInstantsearchAdapter.searchClient;

export default {
  data() {
    return {
      searchClient,
    };
  },
};
</script>

You can then add any of the Instantsearch widgets here that are supported by the adapter.

With angular-instantsearch

// app.component.ts
import { Component } from "@angular/core";
import TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter from "typesense-instantsearch-adapter";

const typesenseInstantsearchAdapter = new TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter({
  server: {
    apiKey: "abcd", // Be sure to use an API key that only allows search operations
    nodes: [
      {
        host: "localhost",
        path: "", // Optional. Example: If you have your typesense mounted in localhost:8108/typesense, path should be equal to '/typesense'
        port: "8108",
        protocol: "http",
      },
    ],
    cacheSearchResultsForSeconds: 2 * 60, // Cache search results from server. Defaults to 2 minutes. Set to 0 to disable caching.
  },
  // The following parameters are directly passed to Typesense's search API endpoint.
  //  So you can pass any parameters supported by the search endpoint below.
  //  query_by is required.
  additionalSearchParameters: {
    query_by: "name,description,categories",
  },
});
const searchClient = typesenseInstantsearchAdapter.searchClient;

@Component({
  selector: "app-root",
  templateUrl: "./app.component.html",
  styleUrls: ["./app.component.css"],
})
export class AppComponent {
  config = {
    indexName: "products",
    searchClient,
  };
}

You can then add any of the Instantsearch widgets here that are supported by the adapter.

Widget Specific Instructions

hierarchicalMenu

For this widget, you want to create independent fields in the collection's schema with this specific naming convention:

• field.lvl0
• field.lvl1
• field.lvl2

for a nested hierarchy of field.lvl0 > field.lvl1 > field.lvl2

Each of these fields can also hold an array of values. This is useful for handling multiple hierarchies.

sortBy

When instantiating this widget, you want to set the value of the index name to this particular format:

search.addWidgets([
  sortBy({
    container: "#sort-by",
    items: [
      { label: "Default", value: "products" },
      { label: "Price (asc)", value: "products/sort/price:asc" },
      { label: "Price (desc)", value: "products/sort/price:desc" },
    ],
  }),
]);

The generalized pattern for the value attribute is: <index_name>[/sort/<sort_by>]. The adapter will use the value in <sort_by> as the value for the sort_by search parameter.

configure

If you need to specify a filter_by search parameter for Typesense, you want to use the configure InstantSearch widget, along with facetFilters, numericFilters or filters.

The format for facetFilters and numericFilters is the same as Algolia's as described here. But filters needs to be in Typesense's filter_by format as described in this table here.

Setting filter_by inside the additionalQueryParameters config only works when the widgets are loaded initially, because InstantSearch internally overrides the filter_by field subsequently. Read more here.

index

For Federated / Multi-Index Search, you'd need to use the index widget. To then be able to specify different search parameters for each index/collection, you can specify them using the collectionSpecificSearchParameters configuration:

const typesenseInstantsearchAdapter = new TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter({
  server: {
    apiKey: "abcd", // Be sure to use an API key that only allows search operations
    nodes: [{ host: "localhost", path: "/", port: "8108", protocol: "http" }],
  },
  // Search parameters that are common to all collections/indices go here:
  additionalSearchParameters: {
    numTypos: 3,
  },
  // Search parameters that need to be *overridden* on a per-collection-basis go here:
  collectionSpecificSearchParameters: {
    products: {
      query_by: "name,description,categories",
    },
    brands: {
      query_by: "name",
    },
  },
});
const searchClient = typesenseInstantsearchAdapter.searchClient;

Essentially, any parameters set in collectionSpecificSearchParameters will be merged with the values in additionalSearchParameters when querying Typesense, effectively overriding values in additionalSearchParameters on a per-collection-basis.

geoSearch

Algolia uses _geoloc by default for the name of the field that stores the lat long values for a record. In Typesense, you can name the geo location field anything. If you use a name other than _geoloc, you need to specify it when initializing the adapter like below, so InstantSearch can access it:

const typesenseInstantsearchAdapter = new TypesenseInstantSearchAdapter({
  server: {
    apiKey: "xyz",
    nodes: [
      {
        host: "localhost",
        port: "8108",
        path: "/",
        protocol: "http",
      },
    ],
  },
  geoLocationField: "lat_lng_field", // <<======
  additionalSearchParameters,
});

Compatibility

Typesense Server	typesense-instantsearch-adapter	instantsearch.js	react-instantsearch	vue-instantsearch	angular-instantsearch
>= v0.24	>= v2.5.0	>= 4.2.0	>= 6.0.0	>= 2.2.1	>= 3.0.0
>= v0.21	>= v2.0.0	>= 4.2.0	>= 6.0.0	>= 2.2.1	>= 3.0.0
>= v0.19	>= v1.0.0	>= 4.2.0	>= 6.0.0	>= 2.2.1	>= 3.0.0
>= v0.15	>= v0.3.0	>= 4.2.0	>= 6.0.0	>= 2.2.1	>= 3.0.0
>= v0.14	>= v0.2.0	>= 4.2.0	>= 6.0.0	>= 2.2.1	>= 3.0.0
>= v0.13	>= v0.1.0	>= 4.2.0	>= 6.0.0	>= 2.2.1	>= 3.0.0
>= v0.12	>= v0.0.4	>= 4.2.0	>= 6.0.0	>= 2.2.1	>= 3.0.0

If a particular version of the above libraries don't work with the adapter, please open a Github issue with details.

Widget Compatibility

This adapter works with all widgets in this list, except for the following:

• queryRuleCustomData
• queryRuleContext

Development

$ npm install
$ npm run typesenseServer
$ FORCE_REINDEX=true npm run indexTestData

$ npm link typesense-instantsearch-adapter
$ npm run testground

$ npm test

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

$ npm install --global np
$ np

# Follow instructions that np shows you

Help

If you have any questions or run into any problems, please create a Github issue and we'll try our best to help.

© 2020-present Typesense, Inc.