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Session

Search API Decoupled

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Christoph Breidert

Co-Founder, R&D

Speakers

Artem Dmitriiev

Senior Lead Developer

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Agenda

  • Why decoupled search?
  • Why Search API decoupled?
  • Current status and examples
  • How to contribute

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Why decoupled search?

  • Because it is nicer than coupled search
  • Some tools we have used
  • Problems we have encountered
    • Too many APIs, too much specialised know how
    • Updates of APIs (for example Elastic 6-7-8)

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Why Search API decoupled?

  • Search API abstracts the search backend (works with any)
  • Search API handles compatibility with updated backends
  • Search API is platform independent (Acquia, Pantheon, …)
  • Search API is powerful and feature rich
    • Easy configuration
      • UI for building and managing indexes
      • Facets, Autocomplete, etc.
    • Powerful API
      • Alter indexed data, queries, results
      • Plugin architecture

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Decoupled + Search API = Perfect solution

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Why not Search API views with Ajax?

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Alternatives to default Search API integration with views

Search API pages (https://www.drupal.org/project/search_api_page)

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Already decoupled:

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Alternatives are based on retrieving Drupal entities

Only views and GraphQL allow direct results from search backend

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Our approach: re-use as much as possible

Search API modules family has a lot to offer:

  • Facets, autocomplete, tons of pluggable features that can be extended and altered.
  • Search API Decoupled tries to benefit from using the same contrib modules that you normally use but in out-of-Drupal scope.
  • Basically module is just a glue to combine all the useful module features in one easy and friendly way for quicker start of proper search experience.

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Admin UI for search management

  • Everything already there: Search servers, indexes, facets, autocomplete.
  • Numerous field pre and post processing during indexing and query time.
  • All facet and autocomplete settings that apply to “normal” rendering is still possible to use.

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The cost of fast search responses

Only data from the search index is returned, and not from Drupal.

  • increased storage capacity for indexing the search result display HTML of the indexed entities.
  • index has more fields than what are needed for analysis and search itself (for example the name of a field, that is needed for displaying).
  • indexing should be done immediately or with high frequency to avoid. displaying stale results or results that user should not have access too.

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Advantages of not loading entity during search results display

  • Less storage for cache, because normally each search will produce its own version of entity cache record, e.g. for excerpt.
  • Less load on database.
  • Almost instant search results display, because it is already there in search backend.
  • Possibility to define what fields to expose in response and construct the display base on them.
  • And as any decoupled solution - opportunity to use any technology stack you prefer, no need to know Twig or Drupal.

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UI module for controlling search display

DEMO

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Available UI elements and Layouts

UI submodule provides 3 default layouts: one, two and three columns defined by layout_discovery module. It is possible to create your own layouts, just add category “Search” to definition.

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Default UI elements:

  1. Facet (needs facets contrib module)
  2. Search input (with or without autocomplete (search_api_autocomplete))
  3. Pager
  4. Search process summary (how many results in total, how much time it took, and so on)
  5. Search results display

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Configurable UI Element

  • Each UI element can have its own configuration if needed.
  • It is also possible to not have any configuration like “Search Summary” plugin.

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Facets

Every endpoint provides search api display plugin that makes it as a base for facets source entity. This way it is possible to create facets per endpoint, the same way as facets per view.

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Placing search app on a page

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Blocks provided by UI submodule

Search API Search Block with redirect

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This block is has search input (optionally with autocomplete) and automatic redirect to search results page on submit.

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Search API Endpoint

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The main block that includes the JS client. This block exposes drupal settings with all configuration that was done on “UI” tab of an endpoint.

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Configuration: drupalSettings.search_api_endpoint

{

"block-searchapiendpointdefault": {

"id": "default",

"label": "Default",

"base_url": "/api/search/default",

"elements": {

"021b5989-314d-45bc-a6bd-bbf28b483d4e": {

"id": "021b5989-314d-45bc-a6bd-bbf28b483d4e",

"type": "search_input",

"weight": 0,

"behaviors": {

"filter": 0,

"url": 0

},

"widget": "autocomplete",

"settings": {

"placeholder": "Search for contents",

"filter": {

"label": "Your search"

}

}

},

…

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Response�/api/search/default?f%5Btype_0%5D=type%3Apage&q=fox&page=0

  • {search_results: [{,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}],…}
    • facets: [{label: "Category", key: "category", count: 0, active_values: [], results: []},…]
    • max_score: 12
    • search_results: [{,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}]
    • search_results_count: 25
    • search_results_page: 0
    • search_results_pages: 3
    • search_results_per_page: 10
    • took: 114.34

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How to contribute

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How to contribute

  • Build starterkit app
  • Suggest and �collaborate on �features
  • Review, document,�test

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Thank you for joining us!

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