The best search package?

SkyRooms · May 12, 2018, 2:22pm

Hey all, I’m using Autoforms, and they’re fantastic. But now I have to search for form input, and… it seems rather manual.

Is there some package that solves this?

I have 5 input parameters, which are all optional. I’m searching for First, Last, Email, Phone, Company.

So how can I do a Collection search based on 1,2,3,4 or all 5 of these parameters, case non-sensitive?

doctorpangloss · May 12, 2018, 3:06pm

After a pretty cursory look, it looks like the most mature package is easysearch and its autosuggest tool is the only thing available for autoforms specifically: http://matteodem.github.io/meteor-easy-search/docs/autosuggest/

It seems pretty thoughtfully written. For small documents like people profiles, it’ll be pretty effective.

To specifically answer your question, you can see how easysearch does it, including the specific case-non-sensitive regex it uses:

github.com

matteodem/meteor-easy-search/blob/3d631f1e79100be2d28159a20d14b209c5377fda/packages/easysearch:core/lib/engines/mongo-db.js#L51


          selector[aggregation].push(fieldSelector);
        }
      });


      return selector;
    },
    selectorPerField(field, searchString) {
      const selector = {};


      searchString = searchString.replace(/(\W{1})/g, '\\$1');
      selector[field] = { '$regex' : `.*${searchString}.*`, '$options' : 'i'};


      return selector;
    },
    sort(searchObject, options) {
      return options.index.fields;
    }
  };
}


/**

In short, it does a query that resembles, for the search “Mike”:

{
  $or: [
            {firstName: {$regex: '.*Mike.*', $options: 'i'}}
            {lastName: {$regex: '.*Mike.*', $options: 'i'}},
            ...
         ]
}

This will do. The $options: 'i'specifier makes it case-insensitive.

Nowadays, people who make searches on lots of documents would recommend putting the search in a method call. That’s a pretty intuitive approach. The most meteoric would be to put the search in a subscription, but make it non reactive (or at least not ordered).

SkyRooms · May 12, 2018, 4:52pm

Fantastic answer, thank you. I’ve got my script working.

maxhodges · May 14, 2018, 5:35am

if we could redo our project, one of the things we’d do different is to NOT use autoforms

for search, across multiple fields you can create a full-text index on the collection in Mongodb