README

Meilisearch-backed full-text search for Flarum. Drop-in replacement for Flarum's default MySQL LIKE-based search, adding typo tolerance, prefix matching, instant fuzzy matches, per-field weighting (title > content), and proper relevance ranking.

What you get

• Typo tolerance: "wellcom" finds "Welcome", "annoucement" finds "Announcement".
• Searches inside replies: a query that matches only the 14th post in a long thread now surfaces that discussion. Default Flarum search would miss it.
• Highlighted post snippets in the search dropdown: the matching post (not just the first) shows beneath each result.
• Tag-aware visibility: Meilisearch-side filtering against the actor's visible tags. Flarum's normal whereVisibleTo still gates final results, so nothing leaks.
• Live updates: every post create/edit/hide/delete reindexes via a queued job. With Flarum's default sync driver it runs inline (no setup); switch to Redis/database for real async.

Requirements

• Flarum ^1.8
• A reachable Meilisearch instance (^1.0)

Install

composer require ralkage/flarum-ext-search

Enable in Admin → Extensions → Better Search.

Run a Meilisearch instance. Docker is the easiest path:

docker run -d --name meilisearch -p 7700:7700 \
  -v meilisearch_data:/meili_data \
  -e MEILI_ENV=development \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  getmeili/meilisearch:v1.11

For production, set MEILI_MASTER_KEY=<long-random-string> and pass it in the admin settings page.

Build the initial index:

php flarum search:reindex

Or click Rebuild index now on the settings page.

Configuration

All settings live on the admin extension page:

How it works

Two Meilisearch indexes (<prefix>_discussions, <prefix>_posts) are kept in sync via event listeners. When a user searches, the gambit queries both indexes, merges the discussion IDs (title hits first, content hits second), and populates most_relevant_post_id so Flarum's existing dropdown can render the matching post snippet automatically.

Async indexing

Live updates are dispatched as Flarum\Queue\AbstractJob instances. Out of the box they run on the sync driver (inline). To move them off the request path, point Flarum at a real queue (e.g. database/Redis) in config.php:

'queue' => ['driver' => 'database'],

and run a worker: php flarum queue:work.

Console

php flarum search:reindex [--chunk=500]

Rebuilds both indexes from MySQL. Safe to run at any time. It re-upserts; documents never leave the indexes unless explicitly deleted.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.