[nodebb-plugin-meilisearch] use MeiliSearch as a full-text search backend

rongcuid

I am trying out this plugin, but it does not seem to support Chinese. At least, my test searches don't work. Any chance of checking this issue?

rongcuid

It was actually because the backend silently ignores errors and I did not realize my Meilisearch API was not configured properly. See https://github.com/oplik0/nodebb-plugin-meilisearch/issues/3

gotwf

@rongcuid

Just an fyi... fwiw...

@sharonyue is Chinese and OP from another thread that prompted discussion of Meilisearch in the first place. Which subsequently inspired @oplik0 to code up this plugin. Maybe reach out to her for any additional insights/experience she may have?

oplik0

@rongcuid Sorry, since I was setting up my dev environment before I got ACP working I didn't entirely think out error messages - I'll correct this but unfortunately I'm can't do it this week so it'll take until early october.

rongcuid

@oplik0 No problem. Thank you for bringing this plugin to life!

At the same time, it might be nice to mention it in the README.

oplik0

@rongcuid said in [nodebb-plugin-meilisearch] use MeiliSearch as a full-text search backend:

At the same time, it might be nice to mention it in the README.

Good idea, added a warning. Hopefully it won't be needed for long

volanar

For test
https://sandbox.meilisearch.com/

sharonyue

@oplik0 is this issue fixed right now?

sharonyue

@rongcuid Hi, how about your website right now? Does meilisearch works better then solr?

rongcuid

@sharonyue I do not have a public website, just a local test server. Meili works much better than Solr, but this is not tested on a live, production server.

sharonyue

@rongcuid Thanks for your feedback. I have a website running 6 years, I want to try this Meili but I hope to I can get more feedbacks.. otherwise its a bit troublesome for us to test it in our public website..

metaverse

This post is deleted!

metaverse

I fix a bug in this plugin, which will cause empty result in search with filter

sharonyue

@metaverse Hello there, how is this plugin going? fully tested rn?

oplik0

@sharonyue I don't think I fully fixed the setup being a bit finnicky due to lack of feedback on tasks (essentially, especially if you have a lot of posts, things can take a few minutes to finish processing mostly on Meilisearch side, while you're left with nonfunctional search and setting page that doesn't seem to reflect on anything since all the changes will just be queued after the currently running tasks*), but once everything is set up, I haven't had any issues running it.

There are now some basic automated tests, so at the very least I won't accidentally break a simple setup, but obviously they could be much better

* in my defense, when the plugin was being written, Meilisearch task management was very lacking, and 0.30 that addressed that issue was actually released not long after initial plugin versions

sharonyue

@oplik0 Thank you very much for your reply. I have plan to use this one since solr is a very bad engine for non-English language. If it will not bring any side effects on my forum I would like to install it on my site and test it and give you feedback.

I literally know nothing about nodejs and others.. I only know how to install nodebb and run a website.

I will try to install it. Right now I did not see any searching plugin which is good for non-English language. The plugin you wrote is the only one.

sharonyue

I installed meilisearch. I installed nodebb-meilisearch. Then I deactivaed dbsearch. When I searched something, the results look similar. How can I know I am using meilisearch instead of dbsearch?

oplik0

@sharonyue If you don't have specific needs that dbsearch just doesn't handle well at all (e.g. some languages) you can try doing one of these simple things that dbsearch doesn't support:

prefix match - pick a (preferably less common to have it come up near the top) word from a post. Remove its last letter (or a few last letters) and search for it. dbsearch doesn't support
typo tolerance - do the same, but instead of removing a letter swap two letters. Works only with words above 4 characters if I remember correctly.
add a synonym for that word in ACP (can be just gibberish). Search for the synonym

sharonyue

I think meilisearch is working right now. I can see the results are better. From my experience, I need to take a note in case I need to install it in the future again:

I need to run meilisearch by ./meilisearch > log & manully, I dont need to do anything. I cannot let it run by 'systemctl start meilisearch'. Nothing more needs to be done.
I need to install dbsearch firstly then deactived it. Otherwise nodebb-meilisearch does not open the page in ACP (we cannot see that search button on the right bar)

Then everything works well. I did not see anyproblem from users' end. It looks great.

The results are MUCH MUCH MUCH BETTER than solr. I highly suggest the other website who is using non-English to use nodebb-meilisearch.

Thank you @oplik0 . If you receive personal danote by paypal. I would like to donate 150 dollars

oplik0

@sharonyue said in [nodebb-plugin-meilisearch] use MeiliSearch as a full-text search backend:

I need to run meilisearch by ./meilisearch > log & manully, I dont need to do anything. I cannot let it run by 'systemctl start meilisearch'. Nothing more needs to be done.

If you want to run it as a systemd service, there is a guide in Meilisearch documentation: https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/learn/cookbooks/running_production
You skip step 5, since it's about securely exposing Meilisearch to the outside - which you don't need to do if you're running on the same machine as NodeBB (since then NodeBB is just talking to it locally, and Meili isn't exposed to the internet at all)

I need to install dbsearch firstly then deactived it. Otherwise nodebb-meilisearch does not open the page in ACP (we cannot see that search button on the right bar)

That's weird, I guess I actually never tested it with dbsearch fully uninstalled, since it's there by default (and the way NodeBB tests are set up, I can't even easily add CI for this case. Even disabling dbsearch there is a bit hacky). I'll look into fixing it when I have time, but I'm not actually sure if it's the fault of the plugin (I don't think it refers to dbsearch in any way that could cause this, so this might be a NodeBB issue)