Using Elasticsearch 8.2 with PHP 8: Installation, Indexing, and CRUD Operations

Elasticsearch is a Lucene‑based distributed search server that provides a RESTful API and is written in Java. It is widely used for real‑time, reliable, and fast enterprise search and is designed for cloud environments.

Environment

PHP 8.0, Elasticsearch 8.2, and the official elasticsearch‑php 8.2 client library.

Install Elasticsearch

wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-8.2.3.tar.gz
 tar zxvf elasticsearch-8.2.3.tar.gz
 useradd elasticsearch
 password elasticsearch
 chown elasticsearch:elasticsearch elasticsearch-8.2.3
 cd elasticsearch-8.2.3
 ./bin/elasticsearch  // start

Install PHP extension

Use Composer to add the client library:

{
  "require": {
    // ...
    "elasticsearch/elasticsearch": "~8.2.3"
    // ...
  }
}

Run composer update to install.

Test example – MySQL table and data

# Create articles table
create table articles(
  id int not null primary key auto_increment,
  title varchar(200) not null comment '标题',
  content text comment '内容'
);

# Insert sample rows
insert into articles(title, content) values
('Laravel 测试1','Laravel 测试文章内容1'),
('Laravel 测试2','Laravel 测试文章内容2'),
('Laravel 测试3','Laravel 测试文章内容3');

Read data from MySQL

try {
  $db = new PDO('mysql:host=127.0.0.1;dbname=test','root','');
  $sql = 'select * from articles';
  $query = $db->prepare($sql);
  $query->execute();
  $lists = $query->fetchAll();
  print_r($lists);
} catch (Exception $e) {
  echo $e->getMessage();
}

Instantiate Elasticsearch client

require './vendor/autoload.php';
use Elasticsearch\ClientBuilder;
$client = ClientBuilder::create()->build();

In Elasticsearch, an index is analogous to a MySQL table and a document to a row.

Index documents

foreach ($lists as $row) {
  $params = [
    'body' => [
      'id' => $row['id'],
      'title' => $row['title'],
      'content' => $row['content']
    ],
    'id' => 'article_' . $row['id'],
    'index' => 'articles_index',
    'type' => 'articles_type'
  ];
  $client->index($params);
}

Get a document from the index

$params = [
  'index' => 'articles_index',
  'type' => 'articles_type',
  'id' => 'articles_1'
];
$res = $client->get($params);
print_r($res);

Delete a document

$params = [
  'index' => 'articles_index',
  'type' => 'articles_type',
  'id' => 'articles_1'
];
$res = $client->delete($params);
print_r($res);

Delete the entire index

$params = [
  'index' => 'articles_index'
];
$res = $client->indices()->delete($params);
print_r($res);

Create an index with custom settings

$params['index'] = 'articles_index';
$params['body']['settings']['number_of_shards'] = 2;
$params['body']['settings']['number_of_replicas'] = 0;
$client->indices()->create($params);

Search documents

$params = [
  'index' => 'articles_index',
  'type' => 'articles_type',
];
$params['body']['query']['match']['content'] = 'Laravel';
$res = $client->search($params);
print_r($res);

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