Search engine

As of Front-Commerce 2.5.0, it is possible to use Elasticsearch or Algolia to bring a search engine to your website.

Elasticsearch

Requirements

On Magento’s side, you need to install the front-commerce-oss/magento1-elasticsuite-indexer module. You can install it with composer:

composer require front-commerce-oss/magento1-elasticsuite-indexer

After the installation, you need to configure it, at least:

1. in System > Catalog > Catalog in the Catalog Search section, make sure the search engine is set on Smile Searchandising Suite
2. in the same section, set the server host and port
3. take note of the alias (magento by default)

You can then run the indexer so that the products, categories and cms pages are indexed in Elasticsearch.

Front-Commerce configuration

First, you need to make sure the Elasticsearch search client is installed with a version that matches your ElasticSearch server:

npm i @elastic/elasticsearch@6

On Front-Commerce side, you need to enable the Elasticsearch datasource by making the changes in your .front-commerce.js file similar to:

// .front-commerce.js
-  modules: [],
+  modules: ["./node_modules/front-commerce/modules/datasource-elasticsearch"],
   serverModules: [
     { name: "FrontCommerceCore", path: "server/modules/front-commerce-core" },
+    {
+      name: "Magento1Elasticsearch",
+      path: "datasource-elasticsearch/server/modules/magento1-elasticsearch",
+    },
     { name: "Magento1", path: "server/modules/magento1" },
   ]

⚠️ Known issue: the Elasticsearch server module needs to be enabled before the Magento’s module.

Then, in your .env file, you need to define the FRONT_COMMERCE_ES_HOST and FRONT_COMMERCE_ES_ALIAS variables.

After restarting Front-Commerce, you should be able run a GraphQL query to search for products, for instance:

query Search {
  search(query: "whatever you want to search for") {
    query
    products(params: { from: 0, size: 5 }) {
      total
      products {
        sku
        name
      }
    }
  }
}

If you are using the default theme or the theme Chocolatine, the search bar should now be visible.

Algolia

Requirements

On Magento’s side, you need to install the algolia/algoliasearch-magento module. You can install it with modman:

modman clone https://github.com/algolia/algoliasearch-magento.git

After the installation, you need to configure it, at least:

1. in System > Algolia Search > Configuration in the Credentials & Setup section, set the Enable Indexing option
2. in the same section, fill the credentials you can find on the Algolia Dashboard
3. The attribute category_ids must be listed in both the facets configuration and in the indexed product attributes (and there it must be set as Searchable) as Front-Commerce relies on it to list the products in categories.

You can then run the indexer so that the products are indexed in Algolia’s index.

Front-Commerce configuration

First, you need to make sure the Algolia’s search client is installed:

npm i algoliasearch

On Front-Commerce side, you need to enable the Algolia datasource by making the changes in your .front-commerce.js file similar to:

// .front-commerce.js
-  modules: [],
+  modules: ["./node_modules/front-commerce/modules/datasource-algolia"],
   serverModules: [
     { name: "FrontCommerceCore", path: "server/modules/front-commerce-core" },
+    {
+      name: "Magento1Elasticsearch",
+      path: "datasource-algolia/server/modules/magento1-algolia",
+    },
     { name: "Magento1", path: "server/modules/magento1" },
   ]

⚠️ Known issue: the Algolia server module needs to be enabled before the Magento’s module.

As of Front-Commerce 2.6, Algolia’s module is automatically configured. If you are using Front-Commerce 2.5, you need to define all the Algolia related environment variables in your .env file.

Front-Commerce 2.6 takes the following parameters from Magento:

• the Application ID
• the search only API key
• the index name prefix
• the number of values per facet
• the configured facet attributes

On the configured facets, only the attribute name is taken into account (Facet type, Label, Searchable and Create Query rule are ignored for now).

⚠️ For performance reason, the configuration retrieved from Magento is cached. As a result, after changing a parameter in the backoffice, the new parameter will be taken into account after at most one minute by Front-Commerce.

After restarting Front-Commerce, you should be able run a GraphQL query to search for products, for instance:

query Search {
  search(query: "whatever you want to search for") {
    query
    products(params: { from: 0, size: 5 }) {
      total
      products {
        sku
        name
      }
    }
  }
}

If you are using the default theme or the theme Chocolatine, the search bar should now be visible.

⚠️ For now Front-Commerce Algolia implementation is only able to provide Product search. If you need to search through Categories or CMS pages, please contact us.