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This gem let you easily integrate the Algolia Search API to your favorite ORM. It's based on the algoliasearch-client-ruby gem. Rails 5.x and 6.x are supported.

You might be interested in the sample Ruby on Rails application providing a autocomplete.js-based auto-completion and InstantSearch.js-based instant search results page: algoliasearch-rails-example.

API Documentation

You can find the full reference on Algolia's website.

Setup
- Install
- Configuration
- Timeouts
- Notes
Usage
Options
Indices
Testing
- Notes
Troubleshooting
- Frequently asked questions

Setup

Install

gem install algoliasearch-rails

Add the gem to your <code>Gemfile</code>:

gem "algoliasearch-rails"

And run:

bundle install

Configuration

Create a new file <code>config/initializers/algoliasearch.rb</code> to setup your <code>APPLICATION_ID</code> and <code>API_KEY</code>.

AlgoliaSearch.configuration = { application_id: 'YourApplicationID', api_key: 'YourAPIKey' }

The gem is compatible with ActiveRecord, Mongoid and Sequel.

Timeouts

You can configure a various timeout thresholds by setting the following options at initialization time:

AlgoliaSearch.configuration = {
  application_id: 'YourApplicationID',
  api_key: 'YourAPIKey',
  connect_timeout: 2,
  receive_timeout: 30,
  send_timeout: 30,
  batch_timeout: 120,
  search_timeout: 5
}

Notes

This gem makes extensive use of Rails' callbacks to trigger the indexing tasks. If you're using methods bypassing after_validation, before_save or after_commit callbacks, it will not index your changes. For example: update_attribute doesn't perform validations checks, to perform validations when updating use update_attributes.

All methods injected by the AlgoliaSearch module are prefixed by algolia_ and aliased to the associated short names if they aren't already defined.

Contact.algolia_reindex! # <=> Contact.reindex!

Contact.algolia_search("jon doe") # <=> Contact.search("jon doe")

Usage

Index Schema

The following code will create a <code>Contact</code> index and add search capabilities to your <code>Contact</code> model:

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base
  include AlgoliaSearch

  algoliasearch do
    attributes :first_name, :last_name, :email
  end
end

You can either specify the attributes to send (here we restricted to <code>:first_name, :last_name, :email</code>) or not (in that case, all attributes are sent).

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  include AlgoliaSearch

  algoliasearch do
    # all attributes will be sent
  end
end

You can also use the <code>add_attribute</code> method, to send all model attributes + extra ones:

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  include AlgoliaSearch

  algoliasearch do
    # all attributes + extra_attr will be sent
    add_attribute :extra_attr
  end

  def extra_attr
    "extra_val"
  end
end

Relevancy

We provide many ways to configure your index allowing you to tune your overall index relevancy. The most important ones are the searchable attributes and the attributes reflecting record popularity.

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  include AlgoliaSearch

  algoliasearch do
    # list of attribute used to build an Algolia record
    attributes :title, :subtitle, :description, :likes_count, :seller_name

    # the `searchableAttributes` (formerly known as attributesToIndex) setting defines the attributes
    # you want to search in: here `title`, `subtitle` & `description`.
    # You need to list them by order of importance. `description` is tagged as
    # `unordered` to avoid taking the position of a match into account in that attribute.
    searchableAttributes ['title', 'subtitle', 'unordered(description)']

    # the `customRanking` setting defines the ranking criteria use to compare two matching
    # records in case their text-relevance is equal. It should reflect your record popularity.
    customRanking ['desc(likes_count)']
  end

end

Indexing

To index a model, simple call reindex on the class:

Product.reindex

To index all of your models, you can do something like this:

Rails.application.eager_load! # Ensure all models are loaded (required in development).

algolia_models = ActiveRecord::Base.descendants.select{ |model| model.respond_to?(:reindex) }

algolia_models.each(&:reindex)

Frontend Search (realtime experience)

Traditional search implementations tend to have search logic and functionality on the backend. This made sense when the search experience consisted of a user entering a search query, executing that search, and then being redirected to a search result page.

Implementing search on the backend is no longer necessary. In fact, in most cases it is harmful to performance because of added network and processing latency. We highly recommend the usage of our JavaScript API Client issuing all search requests directly from the end user's browser, mobile device, or client. It will reduce the overall search latency while offloading your servers at the same time.

The JS API client is part of the gem, just require algolia/v3/algoliasearch.min somewhere in your JavaScript manifest, for example in application.js if you are using Rails 3.1+:

//= require algolia/v3/algoliasearch.min

Then in your JavaScript code you can do:

var client = algoliasearch(ApplicationID, Search-Only-API-Key);
var index = client.initIndex('YourIndexName');
index.search('something', { hitsPerPage: 10, page: 0 })
  .then(function searchDone(content) {
    console.log(content)
  })
  .catch(function searchFailure(err) {
    console.error(err);
  });

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

Backend Search

Notes: We recommend the usage of our JavaScript API Client to perform queries directly from the end-user browser without going through your server.

A search returns ORM-compliant objects reloading them from your database. We recommend the usage of our JavaScript API Client to perform queries to decrease the overall latency and offload your servers.

hits =  Contact.search("jon doe")
p hits
p hits.raw_answer # to get the original JSON raw answer

A highlight_result attribute is added to each ORM object:

hits[0].highlight_result['first_name']['value']

If you want to retrieve the raw JSON answer from the API, without re-loading the objects from the database, you can use:

json_answer = Contact.raw_search("jon doe")
p json_answer
p json_answer['hits']
p json_answer['facets']

Search parameters can be specified either through the index's settings statically in your model or dynamically at search time specifying search parameters as second argument of the search method:

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base
  include AlgoliaSearch

  algoliasearch do
    attribute :first_name, :last_name, :email

    # default search parameters stored in the index settings
    minWordSizefor1Typo 4
    minWordSizefor2Typos 8
    hitsPerPage 42
  end
end

# dynamical search parameters
p Contact.raw_search('jon doe', { hitsPerPage: 5, page: 2 })

Backend Pagination

Even if we highly recommend to perform all search (and therefore pagination) operations from your frontend using JavaScript, we support both will_paginate and kaminari as pagination backend.

To use <code>:will_paginate</code>, specify the <code>:pagination_backend</code> as follow:

AlgoliaSearch.configuration = { application_id: 'YourApplicationID', api_key: 'YourAPIKey', pagination_backend: :will_paginate }

Then, as soon as you use the search method, the returning results will be a paginated set:

# in your controller
@results = MyModel.search('foo', hitsPerPage: 10)

# in your views
# if using will_paginate
<%= will_paginate @results %>

# if using kaminari
<%= paginate @results %>

Faceting

Facets can be retrieved calling the extra facets method of the search answer.

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base
  include AlgoliaSearch

  algoliasearch do
    # [...]

    # specify the list of attributes available for faceting
    attributesForFaceting [:company, :zip_code]
  end
end

hits = Contact.search('jon doe', { facets: '*' })
p hits                    # ORM-compliant array of objects
p hits.facets             # extra method added to retrieve facets
p hits.facets['company']  # facet values+count of facet 'company'
p hits.facets['zip_code'] # facet values+count of facet 'zip_code'

raw_json = Contact.raw_search('jon doe', { facets: '*' })
p raw_json['facets']

Faceted search

You can also search for facet values.

Product.search_for_facet_values('category', 'Headphones') # Array of {value, highlighted, count}

This method can also take any parameter a query can take. This will adjust the search to only hits which would have matched the query.

# Only sends back the categories containing red Apple products (and only counts those)
Product.search_for_facet_values('category', 'phone', {
  query: 'red',
  filters: 'brand:Apple'
}) # Array of phone categories linked to red Apple products

Group by

More info on distinct for grouping can be found here.

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base
  include AlgoliaSearch

  algoliasearch do
    # [...]

    # specify the attribute to be used for distinguishing the records
    # in this case the records will be grouped by company
    attributeForDistinct "company"
  end
end

Geo-Search

Use the <code>geoloc</code> method to localize your record:

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base
  include AlgoliaSearch

  algoliasearch do
    geoloc :lat_attr, :lng_attr
  end
end

At query time, specify <code>{ aroundLatLng: "37.33, -121.89", aroundRadius: 50000 }</code> as search parameters to restrict the result set to 50KM around San Jose.

Options

Auto-indexing & asynchronism

Each time a record is saved, it will be asynchronously indexed. On the other hand, each time a record is destroyed, it will be - asynchronously - removed from the index. That means that a network call with the ADD/DELETE operation is sent synchronously to the Algolia API but then the engine will asynchronously process the operation (so if you do a search just after,