Meteor Easy Search

Searching made simple, featuring Elastic Search! Here's the leaderboard example, made searchable.

Quick Intro

Create a search index like that:

// on Client and Server
EasySearch.createSearchIndex('cars', {
    'collection'    : Cars,			// instanceof Meteor.Collection
    'field'         : 'company',	// can also be an array of fields
    'limit'         : 20,           // default: 10
});

EasySearch.search('cars', 'Volvo', function (error, data) {
	console.log(data); // data has all cars with a company which fuzzy equal Volvo
});

// Change properties, useful for enhancing your search
EasySearch.changeProperty('cars', 'limit', 50);

As of now, a fuzzy like this query is used. If you have any recommendations, reasons why we shouldn't use this kind of query, open a ticket.

Features

• Simple search API
• Blaze Components
• Support for Elastic Search
• Automatic syncing beetween Collection and ES (with observeChanges)

Blaze Components

A basic example of all the components in a template

<template name="searchTpl">
    <div class="search-input">
        {{> esInput index="players" placeholder="Search..." }}
    </div>

    {{#ifEsIsSearching index="players"}}
        <div>Loading...</div>
    {{/ifEsIsSearching}}

    <div class="results-wrapper">
        {{#esEach index="players"}}
            {{> player}}
        {{/esEach}}

        {{#ifEsHasNoResults index="players"}}
            <div class="no-results">No results found!</div>
        {{/ifEsHasNoResults}}
    </div>
</template>

You can implement a text input, the search results view, the loading bar and more with the provided Components.

esInput and esEach

esInput provides you with a text field and esEach lets you iterate over the found search results for that text input field.

esInput field has following parameters:

• index (required, the index name)
• classes (not required, additional classes)
• id (not required, id of the input)
• placeholder (not required, placeholder)
• event (not required, the event to listen on (only "enter" or "keyup" for now))
• reactive (default true, make the search not reactive if wished)
• timeout (not required, when to start the search after keyup)

esEach has following parameters:

• index (required, the index name)
• options (not required, the options for the find cursor, see here)

ifEsIsSearching

Show certain content when a search is performed. For example when you got an input for a specified index you would have to specify the same index parameter.

ifEsSearching field has following parameters

• index (required, the index name)
• id (not requid, if specified on esInput add the id)

ifEsHasNoResults

Show "no results found" content after the search has been performed.

ifEsHasNoResults field has following parameters

• index (required, the index name)
• id (not requid, if specified on esInput add the id)

Additional info

• When you specify an id on the search input (esInput), you have to add the id parameter also in the ifEsHasNoResults and ifEsSearching

How to install

# Install Elastic Search through brew.
brew install elasticsearch
# Start the service, runs on http://localhost:9200.
elasticsearch -f -D es.config=/usr/local/opt/elasticsearch/config/elasticsearch.yml
# Add the package to your project.
cd /path/to/project
mrt add easy-search

If you're getting following error, that means that your elastic search instance isn't running at the specified location (default: localhost:9200):

Error: connect ECONNREFUSED

Advanced Usage

On Server

// Advanced configuration
EasySearch.config({
	'host'  : '192.100.10.10', // default: "localhost"
	'port'  : '9100', 		 // default: 9200
	'safe'  : true,			// default: false
	'debug' : true 			// no default
});

EasySearch.conditions({
    // when trying to changeProperty() on the client
	'onChangeProperty' : function () {}
});

// fields are mapped over each document
EasySearch.search(id, searchString[, fields], callback);

// returns an ElasticSearchClient
// see [here](https://github.com/phillro/node-elasticsearch-client)
EasySearch.getElasticSearchClient();

See here, for more config() possibilities.

On Client and Server

EasySearch.createSearchIndex('cars', {
    ...
    // format of returned data, default: mongo
    'format' : 'raw',
    // return a query object on the server
    'query'  : function (fields, searchString),
    // http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl.html
});

// change a property set with createSearchIndex()
EasySearch.changeProperty(name, key, value);
/*
	will not validate on the server, but on the client with conditions
	for example do something like this:
*/
EasySearch.changeProperty('cars', 'limit', 100);

Without using Elastic Search

If you don't want to use Elastic Search and profit of the performance, you can use mongodb for searching. Simply add a 'use' property when creating the search index.

EasySearch.createSearchIndex('cars', {
    ...
    'use' : 'mongo-db'
});

The use property is elastic-search by default.

Searching over several collections

There's also the possibility to use EasySearch.searchMultiple on the client-side to perform a search over multiple indexes.

EasySearch.searchMultiple(['cars', 'people'], 'Volvo', function (error, data) {
    console.log(data);
}))

If you want to use it with the Blaze Components, you can simply change the index parameter to an array and define one esEach loop for each index defined.

Tips

• Setup conditions which validate the limit to be not bigger than 100, or whatever you think your server can handle
• Use array in the fields property, to get a easily enhanced searched over all your mongodb fields
• config() and conditions() return your configuration / conditions, if you need them