DEV Community

Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

Posted on

Meilisearch Has a Free API You Should Know About

#meilisearch #search #api #webdev

Meilisearch is an open-source search engine with typo tolerance, filters, and facets — and search results come back in <50ms.

Add Documents 

import { MeiliSearch } from 'meilisearch'

const client = new MeiliSearch({ host: 'http://localhost:7700', apiKey: 'masterKey' })

// Index documents
await client.index('products').addDocuments([
  { id: 1, name: 'iPhone 15 Pro', category: 'Electronics', price: 999, brand: 'Apple' },
  { id: 2, name: 'Samsung Galaxy S24', category: 'Electronics', price: 799, brand: 'Samsung' },
  { id: 3, name: 'MacBook Air M3', category: 'Laptops', price: 1099, brand: 'Apple' }
])
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Search — Instant & Typo-Tolerant 

// Basic search (handles typos automatically)
const results = await client.index('products').search('iphon') // finds "iPhone 15 Pro"

// With filters and facets
const results = await client.index('products').search('laptop', {
  filter: ['price < 1500', 'brand = Apple'],
  facets: ['category', 'brand'],
  sort: ['price:asc'],
  limit: 10,
  attributesToHighlight: ['name']
})
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

REST API 

# Search
curl 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/products/search' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer masterKey' \
  -d '{"q": "laptop", "filter": "price < 1500", "limit": 10}'

# Multi-index search
curl 'http://localhost:7700/multi-search' \
  -d '{"queries": [
    {"indexUid": "products", "q": "apple"},
    {"indexUid": "articles", "q": "apple"}
  ]}'
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Configure Search Behavior 

// Set searchable and filterable attributes
await client.index('products').updateSettings({
  searchableAttributes: ['name', 'description', 'brand'],
  filterableAttributes: ['category', 'brand', 'price'],
  sortableAttributes: ['price', 'rating'],
  synonyms: {
    'phone': ['smartphone', 'mobile'],
    'laptop': ['notebook', 'computer']
  },
  typoTolerance: {
    minWordSizeForTypos: { oneTypo: 4, twoTypos: 8 }
  }
})
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Federated Search (Multi-Index) 

const results = await client.multiSearch({
  queries: [
    { indexUid: 'products', q: 'apple', limit: 5 },
    { indexUid: 'articles', q: 'apple', limit: 5 },
    { indexUid: 'support', q: 'apple', limit: 3 }
  ]
})
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Real-World Use Case

An e-commerce site was using PostgreSQL LIKE queries for search. "iphone case" returned 0 results because products were listed as "iPhone Case" (case mismatch). "laptob" returned nothing (no typo handling). They added Meilisearch: typo tolerance, instant results, faceted navigation. Search conversion rate jumped from 2% to 8%.

Meilisearch is the search engine that makes you look like you have a data science team.

Build Smarter Data Pipelines

Need to scrape websites, extract APIs, or automate data collection? Check out my ready-to-use scrapers on Apify — no coding required.

Custom scraping solution? Email me at spinov001@gmail.com — fast turnaround, fair prices.

Top comments (0)