Elastic Enterprise Search

Old version: https://drupal.org/project/elastic_appsearch

This module is similar to Search API Solr, What Search API Solr is for Solr, this is for Elastic Enterprise Search.

Submodules

This module currently have only one submodule called appsearch, that allow drupal to connect with elastic apps search. In future we may add one more submodule to connect with elastic workplace search.

1. Elastic App Search (Added)
2. Elastic Workplace Search (To be added in future)

This module allows Drupal to connect with elastic enterprise search. Elastic Enterprise search is an elastic product that is built on top of elastic search. Elastic enterprise search provides the capability to add search functionality to any website. This also provides search analytics along with the search. The features of Elastic Enterprise Search are:

1. Top search keywords
2. Top search keywords with no results
3. Top search results with clicks
4. Top search results with no clicks
5. UI to add synonyms
6. Ability to Currat search result
7. Pin certain results on top for a specific keyword
8. Ability to adjust the weight on indexed fields
9. Ability to create multiple search engine
10. Fine tune the search results
11. Ability to choose search filters, sorting options and search result title and link

Dependency

• Search API
• Elastic Enterprise Search PHP SDK
• Pathauto
• Guzzle 6 HTTP Adapter (if you are using D9)
• Guzzle 7 HTTP Adapter (if you are using D10)

This module uses https://github.com/elastic/enterprise-search-php PHP SDK to do all the operations with Elastic Enterprise search.

Running Elastic enterprise search with docker

1. Follow official guide to run Elastic Enterprise Search 7.17 in local.
2. Follow official guide to run Elastic Enterprise Search 8.7 in local.
3. If you are using ddev and want to run Elastic Enterprise Search 8.7 as a part of your ddev stack. You can use the following steps:
   1. Copy the provided .env and docker-compose.enterprise-search.yaml file in docker-compse/ddev folder to .ddev folder of your project.
   2. Run the ddev start or ddev restart command.
   3. Use the http://enterprisesearch:3002 as the elastic enterprise search server url.

Installation

1. Use composer for getting all the module dependencies
2. Enable module
3. Go to Configuration -> Search and metadata -> Elastic AppSearch
4. Add Engine by giving the Appsearch server credentials and enable the server
5. Add Engine by giving the engine details and content types you need to index.
6. Add Schema by selecting the fields you want to index and select the field type.
7. Click on the newly created engine and Click on the index now to index all the documents
8. Go to Configuration -> Search and metadata -> Search UI and create a new search UI entity.
9. Now you will have a search block available in block configuration which can be enabled on any page.

Features

1. Ability to create Multiple Server
2. Ability to create multiple Engines within that server
3. Ability to choose the fields for indexing for each engine
4. Ability to choose the field types for schema
5. Ability to create multiple UI for each search engine
6. Each Search UI is available as a Drupal block that can be enabled on any page
7. Ability to choose content types for indexing for each engine
8. Batch indexing of documents

Limitation

Elastic Enterprise Search provides the ability to index a maximum of 64 fields in each document. There is no option to delete the previously indexed field. You have to delete the complete engine and recreate the new one with the new schema. See Official limits page.

Overriding Search-UI component

The search-ui is a react application that is available as a Drupal block. Sometimes you may want to override the search-ui react component. For example, you may want to add a new field in the result component based on content type or change the look and feel of the search-ui. By default search ui result component display the search result in key-value pair.

But search-ui allows you to override the result component by providing a resultView props to Result component <Results resultView={CustomResultView} />. We have created a custom result component that you can find in modules/appsearch/search-ui/src/components/ResultView/index.js. You can override this component by creating a new component in your custom module by following the below steps:

1. Create a custom module called something like my_custom_searchui under docroot/modules/custom folder.
2. Create the component file docroot/modules/custom/my_custom_searchui/ResultView/index.js and copy the content from modules/appsearch/search-ui/src/components/ResultView/index.js file.
3. Make the changes you want to make in the component.

4. Add the following line in your composer.json file.

   "scripts": {
      "post-install-cmd": [
        "cp -rf docroot/modules/custom/my_custom_searchui/* docroot/modules/custom/elastic_enterprise_search/modules/appsearch/search-ui/src/searchui_components_override",
        "cd docroot/modules/custom/elastic_enterprise_search/modules/appsearch/search-ui && npm install && npm run build"
      ]
    }
   

5. Run the composer install command composer install this will copy your component to the search-ui folder and build the search-ui.

Note: This is a current limitation because the search-ui is a react application and we have to build the application to see the changes and react application can not include the component from outside the application. See getComponent function in modules/appsearch/search-ui/src/utils/index.tsx file.

Resources

1. Customizing Result Component
2. Codesandbox Demo of Search UI
3. Elastic Search UI

Roadmap

1. Add test connection feature on the server page.
2. Remove dependency on path auto and search api module.
3. Add support for other entities apart from nodes.
4. Add support for the elastic Date field that is being indexed as the number as of now. - Done
5. Add support for both ASEC and DESC sort filters.
6. Add support for all content entities, currently it only supports node entity to index.