Deploy and Master Meilisearch for Lightning‑Fast Full‑Text Search

Introduction

Meilisearch is a lightweight, fast full‑text search engine that can be deployed with minimal hardware. It provides sub‑50 ms response times, typo‑tolerance, language‑specific optimizations (e.g., Chinese), and a RESTful API.

Installation with Docker

Pull the official Docker image and run a container exposing port 7700. Example commands:

docker pull getmeili/meilisearch:v1.13
docker run -p 7700:7700 --name meilisearch \
  -e MEILI_ENV='development' \
  -v /mydata/meiliData:/meili_data \
  -d getmeili/meilisearch:v1.13

After the container starts, the Mini Dashboard is reachable at http://<em>host</em>:7700.

Creating an Index and Importing Documents

Meilisearch treats an index as a collection of JSON documents. First download a sample dataset (e.g., movies.json) and import it with curl:

curl -X POST '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/documents?primaryKey=id' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary @movies.json

List all indexes:

curl -X GET '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes'

Delete an index:

curl -X DELETE '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies'

Index Settings

Settings are defined via a JSON payload. To make title and release_date sortable and to enable filtering on genres and release_date:

curl -X PATCH '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/settings' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "sortableAttributes": ["title", "release_date"],
    "filterableAttributes": ["genres", "release_date"]
}'

Document Operations

Add a document:

curl -X POST '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/documents' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "id": 1,
    "title": "Transformers Test",
    "overview": "Young teenager, Sam Witwicky becomes involved in the ancient struggle...",
    "genres": ["Adventure", "Science Fiction", "Action"],
    "poster": "https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w500/6eehp9I54syN3x753XMqjKz8M3F.jpg",
    "release_date": 1182902400
}'

Retrieve a document:

curl -X GET '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/documents/1'

Update a document (partial or full):

curl -X PUT '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/documents' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '[{"id":1,"title":"Transformers Update"}]'

Delete a document:

curl -X DELETE '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/documents/1'

Search Queries

Simple search:

curl -X POST '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/search' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{ "q": "Transformers" }'

Paginated search (first 5 results):

curl -X POST '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/search' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{ "q": "Transformers", "offset": 0, "limit": 5 }'

Sorted search (by release date descending):

curl -X POST '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/search' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{ "q": "Transformers", "offset": 0, "limit": 5, "sort": ["release_date:desc"] }'

Filtered search (Action or Adventure genres):

curl -X POST '{{MEILISEARCH_URL}}/indexes/movies/search' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{ "q": "Transformers", "offset": 0, "limit": 5, "sort": ["release_date:desc"], "filter": "genres = Action OR genres = Adventure" }'

Project Repository

GitHub:

https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch