Template Tags

Searching is currently limited to a single index for either provider. Algolia supports searching multiple indexes out of the box, but Meilisearch does not, and requires additional steps to support multi-index searching. Thus, for the time being, searching is limited to 1 index if using the EE template tag.

BoldMinded can not offer support on how to construct queries. Filtering can be very complex and as you can see in the example below each provider has a unique syntax. We have added support for both, so long as you construct the query correctly and have properly set the fields in the respective providers to be filterable or faceted fields (the most common mistake is querying a field that is not set to be filterable). If you are experiencing an issue, check your ExpressionEngine developer logs.

The search template tags are intended for simple queries and results display. If you need users to be able to select multiple facets to filter the result set dynamically, like you're used to seeing on ecommerce sites such as Zappos, we highly recommend using a JavaScript based search component.

Due to the complex nature of the search parameters, they are not defined as native EE tag parameters. There will be too many parsing issues. For this reason Dexter looks for a specific search_filters tag pair and uses the contents of that tag as the search filter.

Meilisearch

For more information on how to use the search filter refer to the Meilisearch docs.

The contents of the search_filters tag pair must be a valid JSON object.

{exp:dexter:search index="test_people" term="luke skywalker"}
    {search_filters}
        {
            "limit": 1,
            "offset": 0,
            "filter": [
                "status = 'open'",
                "entry_date >= 1732312020"
            ],
            "sort": [
                "entry_date:asc"
            ]
        }
    {/search_filters}

    {if no_results}
        Nope
    {/if}

    {title}
    {ansel}
        {url}
    {/ansel}
{/exp:dexter:search}

Algolia

For more information on how to use the search filter refer to the Algolia search docs.

{exp:dexter:search index="test_people" term="luke skywalker" per_page="10"}
    {search_filters}
        status:open AND entry_date >= 1732312020
    {/search_filters}

    {if no_results}
        Nope
    {/if}

    {title}
    {ansel}
        {url}
    {/ansel}
{/exp:dexter:search}

There are differences in how each provider handles search parameters and faceting. We can't provide all examples or support querying. For example, the per_page parameter is unique to Algolia. Use the limit parameter as noted above for Meilisearch. Also note in the Meilisearch example you can sort the results at run time by adding the sort filter. Algolia does not support similar functionality. You would need to add entry_date as a sortableAttribute , then add to the ranking setting asc(entry_date). If you export the Algolia index settings with Dexter you should see the sortableAttributes and ranking attributes in the json file.

"sortableAttributes": [
    "entry_date"
]
"ranking": [
    "desc(entry_date)",
    "typo",
    "geo",
    "words",
    "filters",
    "proximity",
    "attribute",
    "exactness"
 ],

Using channel:entries to display results

If the dexter:search tag is not rendering as you expect, perhaps because of how the data is structured in the index (a deeply nested object will not work with the EE template parser), you can use the entry_ids_only parameter on the tag, and the {entry_ids} variable will print a pipe delimited list of entry IDs that you can then use in achannel:entries tag, then you have access to anything and everything related to the entry. This is a perfectly viable approach - let a powerful search engine do the hard work and return a small set of IDs, which you can then use to display the result.

If you are not using the entry_ids_only parameter, remember that the variables in the result are the properties you have indexed in Algolia or Meliesearch, so it may not align exactly with what you normally expect to see in a channel:entriestag result.

{exp:dexter:search index="test_people" term="luke" entry_ids_only="yes"}
    {search_filters}
        {
            "limit": 1,
            "offset": 0,
            "filter": [
                "status = 'open'",
                "entry_date >= 1732312020"
            ]
        }
    {/search_filters}

    {exp:channel:entries entry_id="{entry_ids}"}
        {title}
    {/exp:channel:entries}
{/exp:dexter:search}

Coilpack Support

If you're using Coilpack you can also use Twig or Blade templates to render results. The search_filters parameter is handled as a normal tag parameter since you don't run into template parsing issues using Twig or Blade. Here is an example of the same search tags in Twig.

{% set search = exp.dexter.search({
    index: 'test_people',
    term: 'luke',
    search_filters: {
        limit: 1,
        offset: 0,
        filter: '["status = \'open\'", "entry_date >= 1732312020"]'
    }
}) %}

{% for result in search %}
    {{ result.title }}
{% endfor %}

{% set entryIds = exp.dexter.search({
    index: 'test_people',
    search_filters: {
        limit: 10,
        offset: 0,
    },
    entry_ids_only: true
}) %}

{{ entryIds }}

Template Variables

Dexter creates a couple of global template variables to assist searching.

{dexter_env} Will print out the env config value. You can use this in your templates to keep local sites using a test index, and production using prod

{dexter_suffix} Will print out the suffix config value, which is blank by default. This can be used for multiple purposes, but the most applicable is appending a langauge code to an index to keep multilingual content into it's own index.

An example usage of these variables might look like this:

{exp:dexter:search index="{dexter_env}_support_{dexter_suffix}"}