How does it work?

SearchBox offers a lightweight and performance focused searchbox UI component to query and display results from your Elasticsearch cluster.

Props

Configure appbase.io environment

The below props are only needed if you're not using the SearchBox component under SearchBase provider. These props can also be used to override the global environment defined in the SearchBase component.

  • index string [Required] Refers to an index of the Elasticsearch cluster.

    Note: Multiple indexes can be connected to by specifying comma-separated index names.

  • url string [Required] URL for the Elasticsearch cluster

  • credentials string [Required] Basic Auth credentials if required for authentication purposes. It should be a string of the format username:password. If you are using an appbase.io cluster, you will find credentials under the Security > API credentials section of the appbase.io dashboard.

  • appbaseConfig Object allows you to customize the analytics experience when appbase.io is used as a backend. It accepts an object which has the following properties:

    • recordAnalytics Boolean allows recording search analytics (and click analytics) when set to true and appbase.io is used as a backend. Defaults to false.
    • enableQueryRules Boolean If false, then appbase.io will not apply the query rules on the search requests. Defaults to true.
    • enableSearchRelevancy Boolean defaults to true. It allows you to configure whether to apply the search relevancy or not.
    • userId string It allows you to define the user id to be used to record the appbase.io analytics. Defaults to the client's IP address.
    • useCache Boolean This property when set allows you to cache the current search query. The useCache property takes precedence irrespective of whether caching is enabled or disabled via the dashboard.
    • customEvents Object It allows you to set the custom events which can be used to build your own analytics on top of appbase.io analytics. Further, these events can be used to filter the analytics stats from the appbase.io dashboard.
    • enableTelemetry Boolean When set to false, disable the telemetry. Defaults to true.

To configure the ReactiveSearch API

The following properties can be used to configure the appbase.io ReactiveSearch API:

  • id string [Required] unique identifier of the component, can be referenced in other components' react prop.

  • index string [Optional] The index prop can be used to explicitly specify an index to query against for this component. It is suitable for use-cases where you want to fetch results from more than one index in a single ReactiveSearch API request. The default value for the index is set to the index prop defined in the SearchBase component. You can check out the full example here.

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    <SearchBox
        ...
        index="good-books-clone"
    />
  • dataField string | Array<string | DataField> index field(s) to be connected to the component’s UI view. SearchBox accepts an Array in addition to string, which is useful for searching across multiple fields with or without field weights.
    Field weights allow weighted search for the index fields. A higher number implies a higher relevance weight for the corresponding field in the search results.
    You can define the dataField property as an array of objects of the DataField type to set the field weights.
    The DataField type has the following shape:

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    type DataField = {
    	field: string;
    	weight: number;
    };
  • queryFormat string Sets the query format, can be or or and. Defaults to or.

    • or returns all the results matching any of the search query text's parameters. For example, searching for "bat man" with or will return all the results matching either "bat" or "man".
    • On the other hand with and, only results matching both "bat" and "man" will be returned. It returns the results matching all of the search query text's parameters.
  • react Object react prop is useful for components whose data view should reactively update when on or more dependent components change their states, e.g. a component to display the results can depend on the search component to filter the results.

    • key string one of and, or, not defines the combining clause.
      • and clause implies that the results will be filtered by matches from all of the associated component states.
      • or clause implies that the results will be filtered by matches from at least one of the associated component states.
      • not clause implies that the results will be filtered by an inverse match of the associated component states.
    • value string or Array or Object
      • string is used for specifying a single component by its id.
      • Array is used for specifying multiple components by their id.
      • Object is used for nesting other key clauses.

An example of a react clause where all three clauses are used and values are Object, Array and string.

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<SearchBox
	id="search-component"
	dataField={['original_title', 'original_title.search']}
	react={{
		and: {
			or: ['CityComp', 'TopicComp'],
			not: 'BlacklistComp',
		},
	}}
/>

Here, we are specifying that the suggestions should update whenever one of the blacklist items is not present and simultaneously any one of the city or topics matches.

  • size number Number of suggestions and results to fetch per request.

  • from number To define from which page to start the results, it is important to implement pagination.

  • includeFields Array<string> fields to be included in search results.

  • excludeFields Array<string> fields to be excluded in search results.

  • sortBy string sort the results by either asc or desc order.

  • aggregationField string [optional] One of the most important use-cases this enables is showing DISTINCT results (useful when you are dealing with sessions, events, and logs type data). It utilizes composite aggregations which are newly introduced in ES v6 and offer vast performance benefits over a traditional terms aggregation. You can read more about it over here. You can use aggregationData using onAggregationData callback or subscriber.

    Note: This prop has been marked as deprecated starting v1.2.0. Please use the distinctField prop instead.

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<SearchBox
	id="search-component"
	dataField={['original_title', 'original_title.search']}
	aggregationField="original_title.keyword"
	onAggregationData={(next, prev) => {}}
/>
  • aggregationSize To set the number of buckets to be returned by aggregations.

    Note: This is a new feature and only available for appbase versions >= 7.41.0.

  • highlight Boolean [optional] whether highlighting should be enabled in the returned results.

  • highlightField string or Array [optional] when highlighting is enabled, this prop allows specifying the fields which should be returned with the matching highlights. When not specified, it defaults to applying highlights on the field(s) specified in the dataField prop.

  • customHighlight Object [optional] It can be used to set the custom highlight settings. You can read the Elasticsearch docs for the highlight options at here.

  • categoryField string [optional] Data field whose values are used to provide category specific suggestions.

  • categoryValue string [optional] This is the selected category value. It is used for informing the search result.

  • nestedField string set the nested field path that allows an array of objects to be indexed in a way that can be queried independently of each other. Applicable only when dataField's mapping is of nested type.

  • fuzziness string | number Set a maximum edit distance on the search parameters, which can be 0, 1, 2, or "AUTO". This is useful for showing the correct results for an incorrect search parameter by taking the fuzziness into account. For example, with a substitution of one character, the fox can become a box. Read more about it in the elastic search docs

  • enableSynonyms: Boolean This property can be used to control (enable/disable) the synonyms behavior for a particular query. Defaults to true, if set to false then fields having .synonyms suffix will not affect the query.

  • rankFeature Object This property allows you to define the Elasticsearch rank feature query to boost the relevance score of documents based on the rank_feature fields. Read more about it here.

    The rankFeature object must be in the following shape:

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        {
         "field_name": {
               "boost": 1.0,
              "function_name": "function_object"
            }
        }
    • field_name It represents the dataField that has the rank_feature or rank_features mapping.
    • boost [optional] A floating point number (shouldn't be negative) that is used to decrease (if the value is between 0 and 1) or increase relevance scores (if the value is greater than 1). Defaults to 1.
    • function_name To calculate relevance scores based on rank feature fields, the rank_feature query supports the following mathematical functions:
    • function_object The function object can be used to override the default values for functions.
      • saturation function supports the pivot property that must be greater than zero.
      • log function supports the scaling_factor property
      • sigmoid function supports pivot and exponent[must be positive] properties

    The following example uses a rank feature field named pagerank with saturation function.

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        {
            "id": "search",
            "dataField": ["content"],
            "value": "2016",
            "rankFeature": {
                "pagerank": {
                    "saturation": {
                        "pivot": 2
                    }
                }
            }
        }

    The following example uses the boost property to boost the relevance score based on the pagerank field.

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        {
            "id": "search",
            "dataField": ["content"],
            "value": "2016",
            "rankFeature": {
                "pagerank": {
                    "boost": 2.0
                }
            }
        }

    The following example uses all three functions (saturation, log and sigmoid) to boost the relevance scores.

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        {
        "query": [
            {
                "id": "search",
                "dataField": [
                    "content"
                ],
                "value": "2016",
                "rankFeature": {
                    "pagerank": {
                        "saturation": {
                            "pivot": 2
                        }
                    },
                    "url_length": {
                        "log": {
                            "scaling_factor": 1
                        }
                    },
                    "topics.sports": {
                        "sigmoid": {
                            "pivot": 2,
                            "exponent": 1
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }
  • searchOperators Boolean Defaults to false. If set to true, then you can use special characters in the search query to enable the advanced search.
    Read more about it here.

  • queryString Boolean [optional] Defaults to false. If set to true than it allows you to create a complex search that includes wildcard characters, searches across multiple fields, and more. Read more about it here.

  • distinctField String [optional] This prop returns only the distinct value documents for the specified field. It is equivalent to the DISTINCT clause in SQL. It internally uses the collapse feature of Elasticsearch. You can read more about it over here.

  • distinctFieldConfig Object [optional] This prop allows specifying additional options to the distinctField prop. Using the allowed DSL, one can specify how to return K distinct values (default value of K=1), sort them by a specific order, or return a second level of distinct values. distinctFieldConfig object corresponds to the inner_hits key's DSL. You can read more about it over here.

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<SearchBox
	....
	distinctField="authors.keyword"
	distinctFieldConfig={{
		inner_hits: {
			name: 'most_recent',
			size: 5,
			sort: [{ timestamp: 'asc' }],
		},
		max_concurrent_group_searches: 4,
	}}
/>

To customize the AutoSuggestions

  • enablePopularSuggestions Boolean Defaults to false. When set to true, popular searches are returned as suggestions as per the popular suggestions config (either defaults, or as set through popularSuggestionsConfig or via Suggestions settings in the control plane). Read more about it over here.

  • popularSuggestionsConfig Object Specify additional options for fetching popular suggestions.

    It can accept the following keys:

    • size: number Maximum number of popular suggestions to return. Defaults to 5.
    • minCount: number Return only popular suggestions that have been searched at least minCount times. There is no default minimum count-based restriction.
    • minChars: number Return only popular suggestions that have minimum characters, as set in this property. There is no default minimum character-based restriction.
    • showGlobal: Boolean Defaults to true. When set to false, returns popular suggestions only based on the current user's past searches.
    • index: string Index(es) from which to return the popular suggestions from. Defaults to the entire cluster.

    ```jsx ```
  • enableRecentSuggestions Boolean Defaults to false. When set to true, recent searches are returned as suggestions as per the recent suggestions config (either defaults, or as set through recentSuggestionsConfig or via Recent Suggestions settings in the control plane)

Note: Please note that this feature only works when recordAnalytics is set to true in appbaseConfig.

  • recentSuggestionsConfig Object Specify additional options for fetching recent suggestions.

    It can accept the following keys:

    • size: number Maximum number of recent suggestions to return. Defaults to 5.
    • minHits: number Return only recent searches that returned at least minHits results. There is no default minimum hits-based restriction.
    • minChars: number Return only recent suggestions that have minimum characters, as set in this property. There is no default minimum character-based restriction.
    • index: string Index(es) from which to return the recent suggestions from. Defaults to the entire cluster.

    ```jsx ```
  • enablePredictiveSuggestions Boolean [optional] Defaults to false. When set to true, it predicts the next relevant words from a field's value based on the search query typed by the user. When set to false (default), the matching document field's value would be displayed.

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<SearchBox
	....
	enablePredictiveSuggestions
/>
  • showAutoFill Boolean Defaults to true. This property allows you to enable the auto-fill behavior for suggestions. It helps users to select a suggestion without applying the search which further refines the auto-suggestions i.e minimizes the number of taps or scrolls that the user has to perform before finding the result.

  • showDistinctSuggestions Boolean Show 1 suggestion per document. If set to false multiple suggestions may show up for the same document as the searched value might appear in multiple fields of the same document, this is true only if you have configured multiple fields in dataField prop. Defaults to true.

    Example if you have showDistinctSuggestions is set to false and have the following configurations

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    ```js
    // Your document:
    {
        "name": "Warn",
        "address": "Washington"
    }
    // Component:
    <SearchBox dataField={['name', 'address']} />
    // Search Query:
    "wa"
    ```

    Then there will be 2 suggestions from the same document as we have the search term present in both the fields specified in dataField.

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    Warn
    Washington
  • urlField string It is the dataField whose value contains a URL. This is a convenience prop that allows returning the URL value in the suggestion's response.

  • maxPredictedWords number Defaults to 2. This property allows configuring the maximum number of relevant words that are predicted. Valid values are between [1, 5].


  • applyStopwords Boolean When set to true, it would not predict a suggestion which starts or ends with a stopword. You can find the list of stopwords used by Appbase at here.

  • stopwords Array[String] It allows you to define a list of custom stopwords. You can also set it through Index settings in the control plane.

To customize the SearchBox UI

  • searchBarProps Object Searchbox uses the SearchBar component from react-native-elements to render the input box that means it supports all the properties that are described here.

  • placeholder string set placeholder text to be shown in the component's input field. Defaults to "Search".

  • autosuggest Boolean set whether the autosuggest functionality should be enabled or disabled. Defaults to true.

  • defaultSuggestions Array<Object> preset search suggestions to be shown on focus when the SearchBox does not have any search query text set. Accepts an array of objects each having a label and value property. The label can contain either String or an HTML element. For example

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<SearchBox
    defaultSuggestions={[
        {
            label: 'Songwriting',
            value: 'Songwriting'
        },
        {
            label: 'Musicians',
            value: 'Musicians'
        }
    ]}
>
  • debounce wholeNumber delays executing the query by the specified time in ms while the user is typing. Defaults to 0, i.e. no debounce. Useful if you want to save on the number of requests sent.

  • renderItem Function is useful to customize the suggestion list item. This function accepts two params:

    • suggestion object represents the suggestion item that has label, value, _suggestion_type, source, etc, properties. In the case of a popular suggestion, the _suggestion_type property can have value as index, popular, recent and promoted.
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<SearchBox
	renderItem={(item) => (
		<Text style={{ color: item._suggestion_type === "popular" ? 'blue' : 'red' }}>{item.label}</Text>
	)}
/>
  • render Function You can render suggestions in a custom layout by using the render prop.
    It accepts an object with these properties:

    • loading: Boolean indicates that the query is still in progress.
    • error: object An object containing the error info.
    • data: array An array of suggestions obtained from combining promoted suggestions along with the hits .
    • rawData object An object of raw response as-is from elasticsearch query.
    • promotedData: array An array of promoted results obtained from the applied query. Read More.
    • customData object Custom data set in the query rule when appbase.io is used as backend. Read More
    • resultStats: object An object with the following properties which can be helpful to render custom stats:
      • numberOfResults: number Total number of results found
      • time: number Time taken to find total results (in ms)
      • hidden: number Total number of hidden results found
      • promoted: number Total number of promoted results found
    • value: string current search input value i.e the search query being used to obtain suggestions.
    • triggerClickAnalytics: function A function which can be called to register suggestions click analytics. Read More
  • renderError Function can be used to render an error message in case of any error.

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<SearchBox
	renderError={error => (
		<Text>
			Something went wrong!
			<br />
			Error details
			<br />
			{JSON.stringify(error)}
		</Text>
	)}
/>
  • renderNoSuggestion string|JSX can be used to render a message in case of no list items.

  • autoFillIcon: any This prop allows to override the Icon props or use a custom component. Use null or false to hide the icon.

  • recentSearchIcon: any This prop allows to override the Icon props or use a custom component. Use null or false to hide the icon.

  • goBackIcon: any This prop allows to override the Icon props or use a custom component. Use null or false to hide the icon.

Customize style

  • theme Object Searchbox uses the SearchBar component from react-native-elements that means you can configure the theme with the help of react-native-elements theme object.

  • style Object CSS styles to be applied to the SearchBox component.

  • searchHeaderStyle Object allows to customize the header for the auto-suggestions modal

  • suggestionsContainerStyle Object can be used to customize the style for suggestions container

  • separatorStyle Object useful to customize the suggestion separator UI

Note: To customize the UI for input box please take a look at the style props defined for SearchBar component from react-native-elements. The SearchBox component accepts a prop named searchBarProps that can be used to pass the props to SearchBar component from react-native-elements.

Controlled behavior

  • defaultValue string set the initial search query text on mount.

  • value string [optional] sets the current value of the component. It sets the search query text (on mount and on update). Use this prop in conjunction with the onChange prop.

  • onChange Function [optional] is a callback function which accepts component's current value as a parameter. It is called when you are using the value prop and the component's value changes. This prop is used to implement the controlled component behavior.

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    import { SearchContext } from '@appbaseio/react-native-searchbox';
    const Search = () => {
    	// To retrieve the searchbase context
    	const searchbase = useContext(SearchContext);
    	useEffect(() => {
    		// Get the instance of search component
    		const searchComponent = searchbase.getComponent('book-search');
    		if(searchComponent) {
    			// To fetch suggestions
    			searchComponent.triggerDefaultQuery();
    			// To update results
    			searchComponent.triggerCustomQuery();
    		}
    	}, [text])
    	return (
    		<SearchBox
    			id="book-search"
    			value={text}
    			onChange={(value) => {
    				setText(value);
    			}}
    		/>
    	)
    }

Callbacks for change events

  • onValueChange Function is a callback function which accepts component's current value as a parameter. It is called every-time the component's value changes. This prop is handy in cases where you want to generate a side-effect on value selection. For example: You want to show a pop-up modal with the valid discount coupon code when a user searches for a product in a SearchBox.

  • onValueSelected Function A function callback which executes on selecting a value from result set

  • onError Function gets triggered in case of an error while fetching results

  • onResults Function can be used to listen for the suggestions changes

  • onQueryChange Function is a callback function which accepts component's prevQuery and nextQuery as parameters. It is called everytime the component's query changes. This prop is handy in cases where you want to generate a side-effect whenever the component's query would change.

  • onAggregationData Function can be used to listen for the aggregationData property changes

    • data: Array<Object> contains the parsed aggregations
    • raw: Object Response returned by ES composite aggs query in the raw form.
    • rawData: Object An object of raw response as-is from elasticsearch query.
    • afterKey: Object If the number of composite buckets is too high (or unknown) to be returned in a single response use the afterKey parameter to retrieve the next
  • onBlur Function is a callback handler for input blur event

  • onKeyPress Function is a callback handler for keypress event

  • onFocus Function is a callback handler for input focus event

  • onBlur Function is a callback handler for input blur event

  • onKeyPress Function is a callback handler for keypress event

  • onFocus Function is a callback handler for input focus event

To customize the query execution

  • headers Object set custom headers to be sent with each server request as key/value pairs. For example:
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<SearchBox id="search-component" dataField={['original_title', 'original_title.search']} />
  • transformRequest (requestOptions: Object) => Promise<Object> Enables transformation of network request before execution. This function will give you the request object as the param and expect an updated request in return, for execution.
    For example, we will add the credentials property in the request using transformRequest.
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<SearchBox
	id="search-component"
	dataField={['original_title', 'original_title.search']}
	transformRequest={request =>
		Promise.resolve({
			...request,
			credentials: include,
		})
	}
/>
  • transformResponse (response: any) => Promise<any> Enables transformation of search network response before rendering them. It is an asynchronous function which will accept an Elasticsearch response object as param and is expected to return an updated response as the return value.
    For example:
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<SearchBox
	id="search-component"
	dataField={['original_title', 'original_title.search']}
	transformResponse={async elasticsearchResponse => {
		const ids = elasticsearchResponse.hits.hits.map(item => item._id);
		const extraInformation = await getExtraInformation(ids);
		const hits = elasticsearchResponse.hits.hits.map(item => {
			const extraInformationItem = extraInformation.find(
				otherItem => otherItem._id === item._id,
			);
			return {
				...item,
				...extraInformationItem,
			};
		});

		return {
			...elasticsearchResponse,
			hits: {
				...elasticsearchResponse.hits,
				hits,
			},
		};
	}}
/>

Note

transformResponse function is expected to return data in the following structure.

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    {
        // Elasticsearch hits response
        hits: {
            hits: [...],
            total: 100
        },
        // Elasticsearch aggregations response
        aggregations: {

        }
        took: 1
    }
  • defaultQuery: (component: SearchComponent) => Object is a callback function that takes SearchComponent instance as parameter and returns the data query to be applied to the suggestions, as defined in Elasticsearch Query DSL, which doesn't get leaked to other components. In simple words, defaultQuery is used with data-driven components to impact their own data.

    For example, set the timeout to 1s for suggestion query.

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<SearchBox
    id="search-component"
    dataField={["original_title", "original_title.search"]}
    defaultQuery={() => ({
        "timeout": "1s"
    })}
/>
  • customQuery: (component: SearchComponent) => Object takes SearchComponent instance as parameter and returns the query to be applied to the dependent components by react prop, as defined in Elasticsearch Query DSL.

    For example, the following example has two components search-component(to render the suggestions) and result-component(to render the results). The result-component depends on the search-component to update the results based on the selected suggestion. The search-component has the customQuery prop defined that will not affect the query for suggestions(that is how customQuery is different from defaultQuery) but it'll affect the query for result-component because of the react dependency on search-component.

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<SearchBase
    index="gitxplore-app"
    url="https://@arc-cluster-appbase-demo-6pjy6z.searchbase.io"
    credentials="a03a1cb71321:75b6603d-9456-4a5a-af6b-a487b309eb61"
/>
    <SearchBox
        id="search-component"
        dataField={["original_title", "original_title.search"]}
        customQuery={
            () => ({
                timeout: '1s',
                query: {
                    match_phrase_prefix: {
                        fieldName: {
                            query: 'hello world',
                            max_expansions: 10,
                        },
                    },
                },
            })
        }
    />
    <SearchComponent
        id="result-component"
        dataField="original_title"
        react={{
            and: ['search-component']
        }}
    />

Miscellaneous

  • beforeValueChange Function is a callback function that accepts the component's future value as a parameter and returns a promise. It is called every-time before a component's value changes. The promise, if and when resolved, triggers the execution of the component's query and if rejected, kills the query execution. This method can act as a gatekeeper for query execution since it only executes the query after the provided promise has been resolved. For example:
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<SearchBox
	id="search-component"
	dataField={['original_title', 'original_title.search']}
	beforeValueChange={function(value) {
		// called before the value is set
		// returns a promise
		return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
			// update state or component props
			resolve();
			// or reject()
		});
	}}
/>
  • subscribeTo Array<string> lets you subscribe to various Searchbox properties to render UI (or to create a side-effect) based on changes to the properties.

These are the properties that can be subscribed to:
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-   `results`   
-   `aggregationData`
-   `requestStatus`
-   `error`
-   `value`
-   `query`
-   `micStatus`
-   `dataField`
-   `size`
-   `from`
-   `fuzziness`
-   `includeFields`
-   `excludeFields`
-   `sortBy`
-   `react`
-   `defaultQuery`
-   `customQuery`