Best way to perform a full text search in MongoDB and Mongoose

Question

I'm searching on Google since days and I tried many things but I still can not perform a good full text search on my user collection.

I tried ElasticSearch but was pretty impossible to query and paginate...

I tried many plugins for Mongoose like ElMongo, mongoose-full-text, Mongoosastic, etc... everyone are really bad documented and I don't know how to perform a good full text search.

So, my collection is a normal collection:

user = {
  name: String,
  email: String,
  profile: {
    something: String,
    somethingElse: String
  }
}

I have a search input in a page with a simple POST, if I type hello world what I need is to search on the entire collection fields the matching words of my search query and get the results.

It will be really nice also to have options to handle a pagination like 10 items per page or something...

What is the best solution to achieve this? I'm using MongoDB 2.6.* with Mongoose, NodeJS and ExpressJS.

Thanks.

JohnnyHK · Accepted Answer · 2022-12-21T19:03:41.677

285

You can add a text index to your Mongoose schema definition that lets you use the $text operator in your find queries to search all fields included in the text index.

To create an index to support text search on, say, name and profile.something:

var schema = new Schema({
  name: String,
  email: String,
  profile: {
    something: String,
    somethingElse: String
  }
});
schema.index({name: 'text', 'profile.something': 'text'});

Or if you want to include all string fields in the index, use the '$**' wildcard:

schema.index({'$**': 'text'});

This would enable you to perform a paged text search query like:

MyModel.find({$text: {$search: searchString}})
       .skip(20)
       .limit(10)
       .exec(function(err, docs) { ... });

For more details, read the full MongoDB Text Indexes documentation.

edited Dec 21 '22 at 19:03

answered Feb 27 '15 at 22:52

JohnnyHK

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1

Thanks for your answer. Does not lower the MongoDB performance doing this? One more question please: Can I also choose the fields to index? – Ayeye Brazo Feb 28 '15 at 09:18
5

@AyeyeBrazo I updated the anser to show how to choose the fields to index. Adding any index adds overhead during inserts and updates, as well as added storage requirements, so that must always be considered. – JohnnyHK Feb 28 '15 at 14:05
8

after long searching, your answer is king! – Holger D. Schauf Oct 14 '15 at 16:20
3

Is there possibility to make "wordA AND wordB" search? And search part of words? – Pumych Aug 14 '16 at 21:20
2

@Pumych check https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/operator/query/text/#text-operator-case-sensitivity for case sensitive search – Prasanth Jaya Nov 30 '17 at 20:44
$text is not supported in my case, Can we use wild cards for the same scenario? – s d Oct 08 '21 at 07:55

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 01 '22 at 23:09

This is not an extra answer but an addUp, but if the above answer by JohnnyHK is giving you an empty array [] .

Try something basic first without limit and skip

const results = await MyModel.find({ $text: { $search: "text" } });
Please check if the index was created properly using mongosh using db.stories.getIndexes() or compass GUI both attached. Else create one via COMPASS GUI or via mongosh using docs

Then try changing searchText multiple times and try.
Even after all this it took me 7- 8 runs of same code to get proper results,

Best way to perform a full text search in MongoDB and Mongoose

2 Answers2

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