How to Install and Use Meilisearch: A Step-by-Step Guide 🚀

Saturday, Dec 21, 2024 | 7 minute read

GitHub Trend

🚀 Ultimate Game-Changer in Search Technology! This incredible open-source search engine offers rapid response, AI-driven features, multi-language support, and strong security, allowing developers to create customized, efficient search experiences effortlessly! 🔥💡

In this digital age, more and more users are demanding higher efficiency and accuracy from search engines! 📈 That’s when Meilisearch comes into play, acting as a powerful force driving a transformation in the search experience! 💪

Meilisearch is an unparalleled open-source search engine that provides exceptional search experiences for users across various applications, powered by its high-speed operation and AI-driven features! ✨ Developers can effortlessly create stunning search functionalities, with built-in out-of-the-box features that simplify the workflow, making it absolutely fantastic! 🎉

In the film industry, Meilisearch allows users to quickly find various content on streaming platforms; in e-commerce, it serves as a powerful tool to enhance the shopping experience, supporting faceting, range, and scoring filters, along with pagination, making shopping a seamless experience! 🛒 For music lovers, Meilisearch is a treasure, capable of easily finding your favorite melodies among 47 million songs. 🎶 Moreover, its multi-tenant capability shines in CRM systems, allowing users to efficiently search for contacts and transaction information in various business environments.

1. Breaking the Norm: The Unique Features of Meilisearch 🔍

Meilisearch perfectly combines semantic search and full-text search, creating highly relevant search results! 🎯 With a response time of under 50 milliseconds, it ensures users experience the thrill of “search and instantly find”! 💨 Even if queries aren’t incredibly accurate, Meilisearch’s powerful fault tolerance capability can still provide relevant matches, truly impressive! Additionally, features like dynamic filtering, multi-dimensional search, result sorting, synonym search, and geo-search capabilities allow users to customize their search experience! 🌍 Even better, it offers optimized multi-language support and robust security management, using API keys to finely control permissions, ensuring user data privacy is rigorously protected! 🔒

2. Reasons Developers Choose Meilisearch 👩‍💻

There are plenty of reasons why developers love Meilisearch! 🚀 Its rich support for programming languages and multi-tenant features make it the go-to choice for enterprise solutions! 🏢 Coupled with a strong security management system that meets contemporary data protection standards, developers find it convenient and enjoyable to use! 👍 The ease of installation and maintenance significantly lowers the learning curve, and the backing of an open-source community encourages collaboration and sharing, welcoming contributions and feedback from various fields! 🤝

3. Ecosystem and Resources 🌐

Meilisearch provides an extensive SDK, seamlessly integrating with many popular programming languages and frameworks to enhance functionality efficiency! 🔗 Whether installed locally or in the cloud, users can easily refer to the documentation for detailed installation and configuration guides, including specific guidelines for cloud services like AWS, Azure, and DigitalOcean to ensure it meets diverse needs! ☁️ For advanced users, detailed API references help them with complex configurations and advanced queries, elevating their experience even further! 🚀

4. Logs and Privacy 🕵️‍♂️

Meilisearch is built on anonymous user data, continuously enhancing the engine’s performance! Users also have the option to opt-out of data collection, and can directly request the deletion of related data. 🔄 A clear data privacy policy allows users to use the service with peace of mind, without worrying about the security of their personal information—definitely a trustworthy option! 🛡️

5. Contributions and Version Updates 🌟

Meilisearch is a truly open-source project that actively welcomes contributions from the community, driving the project forward! 📈 It follows Semantic Versioning (SemVer) principles, with detailed version management policies documented to ensure users easily understand new features and updates. 🔄

Meilisearch offers a fast, flexible, and secure search solution, worthy of every developer and business friend to explore and apply! 💻💡

Using Meilisearch: A Comprehensive Guide from Installation to Search 🌟

1. Installing Meilisearch 🚀

Hey, friends! Let’s start with the installation of Meilisearch, which is incredibly simple. Take a look at the specific steps:

# Install Meilisearch
curl -L https://install.meilisearch.com | sh

# Start Meilisearch
./meilisearch

• First line of code downloads and executes the installation script from Meilisearch’s official server using curl, automatically completing the installation.
• Second line of code uses the ./meilisearch command to start the Meilisearch search engine service. Once the service is running, you’ll access Meilisearch through default port 7700.

After running these commands, the terminal will display some initialization information, confirming that Meilisearch has successfully started and is up and running in the system! 🎉

2. Creating an Index 📂

Once Meilisearch is successfully installed and running, you can create an index to store and organize your data! Here’s an example command to create an index named movies:

curl -X POST 'http://localhost:7700/indexes' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
  "uid": "movies",
  "primaryKey": "id"
}'

• Command Details:
  • curl -X POST sends a POST request to http://localhost:7700/indexes, which is the endpoint for creating a new index.
  • JSON data included in the request:
    • "uid": "movies" is the unique identifier for the index, which can be named as desired.
    • "primaryKey": "id" defines the primary key field for the index, representing the unique identifier for each document, here using id to ensure each movie’s uniqueness and manageability within the index.

After executing the command, Meilisearch will respond with a success message confirming that the index has been created! ✨

3. Configuring the Index ⚙️

The next step is to configure the index, allowing for better adaptation to your search requirements. This step will specify which attributes are searchable and filterable. Use the following PATCH request:

curl -X PATCH 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
  "filterableAttributes": ["genre"],
  "searchableAttributes": ["title"]
}'

• Command Details:
  • curl -X PATCH directly targets the specific index (i.e., movies) for attribute configuration.
  • JSON data included in the request:
    • "filterableAttributes": ["genre"] sets the genre attribute as filterable, meaning users can filter by movie type during searches.
    • "searchableAttributes": ["title"] defines the title attribute as searchable, allowing users to retrieve relevant data through movie titles.

By configuring this way, users will have more flexible options to handle and query movie data when using Meilisearch. 🔍

4. Executing a Search 🔎

Once the index and attributes are configured, you can start searching! Here’s an example of searching for movies containing “Inception” in the title and of the genre “Action”:

curl -X GET 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/search' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
  "q": "Inception",
  "filters": "genre = Action"
}'

• Command Details:
  • Using curl -X GET requests to retrieve data matching specific conditions.
  • JSON data included in the request:
    • "q": "Inception" indicates the search keyword is “Inception,” and the system will return all movies with that string in their title.
    • "filters": "genre = Action" restricts the results to those of the genre “Action,” ensuring the search results align precisely with user needs.

After running this command, Meilisearch will return results that match the search criteria, providing timely feedback on user requests—super impressive! 🏆

5. Generating a Search Token 🔐

To enhance security and ensure that the operations you perform are tightly controlled, let’s generate a time-limited search token! Here’s the command to create a token:

curl -X POST 'http://localhost:7700/tokens' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
  "actions": ["search"],
  "expiresAt": "2024-12-31T23:59:59Z"
}'

• Command Details:
  • curl -X POST is used to send a request to the token generation endpoint.
  • JSON data included in the request:
    • "actions": ["search"] specifies that this token allows only search operations, limiting unnecessary access.
    • "expiresAt": "2024-12-31T23:59:59Z" sets the token’s expiration to December 31, 2024, meaning the token will become invalid after that date.

This effectively enhances the security of your search API, mitigating unnecessary security risks—a very savvy move! 🔒

6. Example of Query Results 📝

Upon executing the search request, the returned results are typically in JSON format, looking like this:

{
  "hits": [
    {
      "id": 2770,
      "title": "American Pie 2",
      "poster": "https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w1280/q4LNgUnRfltxzp3gf1MAGiK5LhV.jpg",
      "overview": "The whole gang are back and as close as ever...",
      "release_date": 997405200
    },
    {
      "id": 190859,
      "title": "American Sniper",
      "poster": "https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w1280/svPHnYE7N5NAGO49dBmRhq0vDQ3.jpg",
      "overview": "U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle takes his sole mission...",
      "release_date": 1418256000
    }
  ],
  "offset": 0,
  "limit": 20,
  "estimatedTotalHits": 976,
  "processingTimeMs": 35,
  "query": "american ninja"
}

• Result Details:
  • The "hits" array contains all results matching the search criteria. Each object represents a movie, comprising fields like id, title, poster, etc., where:
    • id is the movie’s unique identifier.
    • title is the movie’s title.
    • poster is the URL for the movie’s poster, perfect for front-end display and sure to catch attention!
    • overview provides a brief synopsis of the movie, your personal guide!
  • Other fields like offset, limit, estimatedTotalHits, etc., provide pagination information and the total number of data items found.

This information not only aids users in obtaining comprehensive search results but also enhances the overall user experience! 🎊

With these clear steps, you should be able to successfully install Meilisearch, create and configure an index, and effectively conduct searches. Keep exploring other features to further uncover the secrets of Meilisearch! 🌈