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.

<div class="search-input">
     <!-- indexes is a javascript array which holds 'players' and 'cars' -->
     {{> esInput index=indexes placeholder="Search..." }}
</div>
<div class="results-wrapper">
     {{#esEach index="players"}}
         {{> player}}
     {{/esEach}}
	
     {{#esEach index="cars"}}
         {{> car}}
     {{/esEach}}
</div>

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

andrefgneves / meteor-easy-search