Laravel Algolia Search

This PHP package integrates the Algolia Search API to the Laravel Eloquent ORM. It's based on the algoliasearch-client-php package. PHP 5.5.9+ is supported.

Laravel 4

Checkout the algoliasearch-laravel-4 repository

Table of Content

1. Install
2. Configuration
3. Quick Start
4. Ranking & Relevance
5. Options
6. Indexing
7. Master/Slave
8. Target multiple indexes
9. Search

Install

Add algolia/algoliasearch-laravel to your composer.json file:

composer require algolia/algoliasearch-laravel

Add the service provider to config/app.php in the providers array.

AlgoliaSearch\Laravel\AlgoliaServiceProvider::class

Configuration

Laravel Algolia requires a connection configuration. To get started, you'll need to publish all vendor assets:

php artisan vendor:publish

You can add the --provider="Vinkla\Algolia\AlgoliaServiceProvider" option to only publish assets of the Algolia package.

This will create a config/algolia.php file in your app that you can modify to set your configuration. Also, make sure you check for changes compared to the original config file after an upgrade.

Quick Start

The following code adds search capabilities to your Contact model creating a Contact index:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use AlgoliaSearch\Laravel\AlgoliaEloquentTrait;

class Contact extends Model
{
    use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
}

By default all visible attributes are sent. If you want to send specific attributes you can do something like:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Contact extends Model
{
    use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
    
    public function getAlgoliaRecord()
    {
        return array_merge($this->toArray(), [
            'custom_name' => 'Custom Name'
        ]);
    }
}

Ranking & Relevance

We provide many ways to configure your index settings to tune the overall relevancy but the most important ones are the searchable attributes and the attributes reflecting the record popularity. You can configure them with the following code:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Contact extends Model
{
    use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
    
    public $algoliaSettings = [
    	'attributesToIndex' => [
    		'id', 
    		'name',
    	],
    	'customRanking' => [
    		'desc(popularity)', 
    		'asc(name)',
    	],
    ];
}

You can propagate (save) the settings to algolia using the setSetting method:

Contact::setSettings();

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 the extra 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.

In your JavaScript code you can do:

var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'Search-Only-API-Key');
var index = client.initIndex('YourIndexName');
index.search('something', function(success, hits) {
  console.log(success, hits)
}, { hitsPerPage: 10, page: 0 });

Backend Search

You could also use the search method but it's not recommended to implement instant/realtime search experience:

Contact::search('jon doe');

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.

You can disable the auto-indexing and auto-removing setting the following options:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Contact extends Model
{
	use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
    
	public static $autoIndex = false;
	public static $autoDelete = false;
}

You can temporary disable auto-indexing. This is often used for performance reason.

Contact::$autoIndex = false;
Contact::clearIndices();

for ($i = 0; $i < 10000; $i++) {
	$contact = Contact::firstOrCreate(['name' => 'Jean']);
}

Contact::reindex(); // Will use batch operations.

Custom Index Name

By default, the index name will be the pluralized class name, e.g. "Contacts". You can customize the index name by using the $indices option:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Contact extends Model
{
    use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
    
    public $indices = ['contact_all'];
}

Per-environment Indexes

You can suffix the index name with the current App environment using the following option:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Contact extends Model
{
    use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
    
    public static $perEnvironment = true; // Index name will be 'Contacts_{\App::environnement()}';
}

Custom objectID

By default, the objectID is based on your record's keyName (id by default). You can change this behavior specifying the objectIdKey option (be sure to use a uniq field).

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Contact extends Model
{
    use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
    
	public static $objectIdKey = 'new_key';
}

Restrict Indexing to a Subset of Your Data

You can add constraints controlling if a record must be indexed by defining the indexOnly() method.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Contact extends Model
{
   	use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
    
	public function indexOnly($index_name)
	{
		return (bool) $condition;
	}
}

Relationships

By default the Algolia package will fetch the loaded relationships.

If you want to index records that didn't yet load any relations you can do it by loading them in the getAlgoliaRecord that you can create in your model.

It will look like:

public function getAlgoliaRecord()
{
	/**
	 * Load the categories relation so that it's available
	 * 	in the laravel toArray method
	 */
	$this->categories; 
  
   return $this->toArray();
}

In the resulted object you will have categories converted to array by Laravel. If you want a custom relation structure you will instead do something like :

public function getAlgoliaRecord()
{
	/**
	 * Load the categories relation so that it's available
	 * 	in the laravel toArray method
	 */
	$extra_data = [];
	$extra_data['categories'] = array_map(function ($data) {
							            return $data['name'];
						        }, $this->categories->toArray();
  
   return array_merge($this->toArray(), $extra_data);
}

Indexing

Manual Indexing

You can trigger indexing using the pushToIndex instance method.

$contact = Contact::firstOrCreate(['name' => 'Jean']);
$contact->pushToIndex();

Manual Removal

And trigger the removing using the removeFromIndex instance method.

$contact = Contact::firstOrCreate(['name' => 'Jean']);
$contact->removeFromIndex();

Reindexing

To safely reindex all your records (index to a temporary index + move the temporary index to the current one atomically), use the reindex class method:

Contact::reindex();

To reindex all your records (in place, without deleting out-dated records):

Contact::reindex(false);

Clearing an Index

To clear an index, use the clearIndices class method:

Contact::clearIndices();

Master/Slave

You can define slave indexes using the $algolia_settings variable:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Contact extends Model
{
	 use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
    
	 public $algoliaSettings = [
		'attributesToIndex' => [
			'id', 
			'name',
		],
    	'customRanking' => [
    		'desc(popularity)', 
    		'asc(name)',
    	],
    	'slaves' => [
    		'contacts_desc',
    	],
    ];

    public $slavesSettings = [
        'contacts_desc' => [
            'ranking' => [
                'desc(name)',
                'typo',
                'geo',
                'words',
                'proximity',
                'attribute',
                'exact',
                'custom'
            ]
        ]
    ];
}

To search using a slave use the following code:

Book::search('foo bar', ['index' => 'contacts_desc']);

Target Multiple Indexes

You can index a record in several indexes using the $indices property:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Contact extends Model
{
	use AlgoliaEloquentTrait;
    
	public $indices = [
		'contact_public', 
		'contact_private',
	];
    
	public function indexOnly($indexName)
	{
		if ($indexName == 'contact_public')
			return true;

		return $this->private;
	}

}

To search using an extra index, use the following code:

Book::search('foo bar', ['index' => 'contacts_private']);

Compatibility

Compatible with 5.x applications

License

Laravel Algolia Search is licensed under The MIT License (MIT).