Search

⚠️ This page is a WIP so is not up-to-date! Please don't use it to develop your project with meilisearch-php.

The search method returns a SearchResult instance.

public function search($query, array $searchParams = [], array $options = [])

$query: the query words.

$searchParams: the search parameters handled by MeiliSearch.

$options: options you can pass during the search. There are described in the options section.

💡 If you don't want the search method to return a class instance, use the rawSearch() method or set raw to true in the $options parameter. No instance class will be created during the process which might improve the performances in some situations.

Search Parameters

All the supported parameters are described in the search parameters section of the documentation.

You will be able to filter, use facets, restrict the fields to retrieve...

Filters Examples

With filters, both single and double quotes are supported.

// Enclosing with double quotes
$index->search('prince', $searchParams = ['filters' => "title = 'Le Petit Prince' OR author = 'J. R. R. Tolkien'"]);

// Enclosing with single quotes
$index->search('hobbit', $searchParams = ['filters' => 'title = "The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy" OR author = "J. R. R. Tolkien"']);

Options

Here are the different options you can pass in the $options parameter.

removeZeroFacets

Default: false

Remove the facetsDistribution values that are equal to zero returned by MeiliSearch.

More about the Faceted Search.

$index->search(
    'prince',
    $searchParams = ['facetsDistribution' => ['genre']],
    $options = [removeZeroFacets => true]
);

// With removeZeroFacets = false
// "facetsDistribution": {
//   "genre": {
//     "horror: 443,
//     "thriller": 200,
//     "comedy": 0
//   }
// }

// With removeZeroFacets = true
// "facetsDistribution": {
//   "genre": {
//     "horror: 443,
//     "thriller": 200,
//   }
// }

transformFacetsDistribution (WIP)

The callback that will be applied to the facetsDistribution array returned by MeiliSearch.

transformHits

The callback that will be applied to the hits array returned by MeiliSearch.

// Before PHP 7.4
function titlesToUpperCase(array $hits) {
    return array_map($hits, function (array $hit) {
        $hit['title'] = strtoupper($hit['title']);
            return $hit;
    });
}

// PHP 7.4 and later
function titlesToUpperCase(array $hits) {
    return array_map($hits, function (array $hit) {
        return [
            ...$hit,
            title: strtoupper($hit['title']
        ]
    });
}

$index->search('prince', $searchParams = [], $options = ['transformHits' => 'titlesToUpperCase'])

raw

Default: false

The search() will return the raw information returned by the MeiliSearch server in an Array. No class instance will be created.

$index->search('prince', $searchParams = [], $options = [raw => true]);

⚠️ Because no class instance is created if you use this option, it means the other options passed as parameter will not be applied.
If you only want to get an Array with your transformed hits and facetsDistribution, please use toArray instead:

$index->search(
    'prince',
    $searchParams = ['facetsDistribution' => ['genre']],
    $options = [removeZeroFacets => true]
)->toArray();

More Option Examples

• To remove some specifics hits in the results:

$removeLePetitPrince = function (array $hits) {
    return array_filter(
        $hits,
        function (array $hit) { 'Le Petit Prince' !== $hit['title']; }
    );
};

$response = $index->search('prince', $searchParams = [], $options = ['transformHits' => $removeLePetitPrince]);