


How does Google search the entire internet for webpages relevant to your vague, typo-filled search query?

In this tutorial, we'll walk through setting up our own full-text search application (of an admittedly lesser complexity than the systems in the questions above). Our example app will provide a UI and API to search the complete texts of 100 literary classics such as Peter Pan, Frankenstein, and Treasure Island.

You can preview a completed version of the tutorial app here -

preview webapp

The source code for the application is 100% open-source and can be found at the GitHub repository here -

Adding fast, flexible full-text search to apps can be a challenge. Most mainstream databases, such as PostgreSQL and MongoDB, offer very basic text searching capabilities due to limitations on their existing query and index structures. In order to implement high quality full-text search, a separate datastore is often the best option. Elasticsearch is a leading open-source datastore that is optimized to perform incredibly flexible and fast full-text search.

We'll be using Docker to setup our project environment and dependencies. Docker is a containerization engine used by the likes of Uber, Spotify, ADP, and Paypal. A major advantage of building a containerized app is that the project setup is virtually the same on Windows, macOS, and Linux - which makes writing this tutorial quite a bit simpler for me. Don't worry if you've never used Docker, we'll go through the full project configuration further down.

We'll also be using Node.js (with the Koa framework), and Vue.js to build our search API and frontend web app respectively.

1 - What is Elasticsearch?

Full-text search is a heavily requested feature in modern applications. Search can also be one of the most difficult features to implement competently - many popular websites have subpar search functionality that returns results slowly and has trouble finding non-exact matches. Often, this is due to limitations in the underlying database: most standard relational databases are limited to basic CONTAINS or LIKE SQL queries, which provide only the most basic string matching functionality.

We'd like our search app to be :

  1. Fast - Search results should be returned almost instantly, in order to provide a responsive user experience.
  2. Flexible - We'll want to be able to modify how the search is performed, in order to optimize for different datasets and use cases.
  3. Forgiving - If a search contains a typo, we'd still like to return relevant results for what the user might have been trying to search for.
  4. Full-Text - We don't want to limit our search to specific matching keywords or tags - we want to search everything in our datastore (including large text fields) for a match.

Elastic Search Logo

In order to build a super-powered search feature, it’s often most ideal to use a datastore that is optimized for the task of full-text search. This is where Elasticsearch comes into play; Elasticsearch is an open-source in-memory datastore written in Java and originally built on the Apache Lucene library.

Here are some examples of real-world Elasticsearch use cases from the official Elastic website.

  • The Guardian uses Elasticsearch to combine visitor logs with social -network data to provide real-time feedback to its editors about the public’s response to new articles.
  • GitHub uses Elasticsearch to query 130 billion lines of code.

What makes Elasticsearch different from a "normal" database?

At its core, Elasticsearch is able to provide fast and flexible full-text search through the use of inverted indices.

An "index" is a data structure to allow for ultra-fast data query and retrieval operations in databases. Databases generally index entries by storing an association of fields with the matching table rows. By storing the index in a searchable data structure (often a B-Tree), databases can achieve sub-linear time on optimized queries (such as “Find the row with ID = 5”).

Relational Index

We can think of a database index like an old-school library card catalog - it tells you precisely where the entry that you're searching for is located, as long as you already know the title and author of the book. Database tables generally have multiple indices in order to speed up queries on specific fields (i.e. an index on the name column would greatly speed up queries for rows with a specific name).

Inverted indexes work in a substantially different manner. The content of each row (or document) is split up, and each individual entry (in this case each word) points back to any documents that it was found within.

Inverted Index

This inverted-index data structure allows us to very quickly find, say, all of the documents where “football” was mentioned. Through the use of a heavily optimized in-memory inverted index, Elasticsearch enables us to perform some very powerful and customizable full-text searches on our stored data.

2 - Project Setup

2.0 - Docker

We'll be using Docker to manage the environments and dependencies for this project. Docker is a containerization engine that allows applications to be run in isolated environments, unaffected by the host operating system and local development environment. Many web-scale companies run a majority of their server infrastructure in containers now, due to the increased flexibility and composability of containerized application components.

Docker Logo

The advantage of using Docker for me, as the friendly author of this tutorial, is that the local environment setup is minimal and consistent across Windows, macOS, and Linux systems. Instead of going through divergent installation instructions for Node.js, Elasticsearch, and Nginx, we can instead just define these dependencies in Docker configuration files, and then run our app anywhere using this configuration. Furthermore, since each application component will run in it's own isolated container, there is much less potential for existing junk on our local machines to interfere, so "But it works on my machine!" types of scenarios will be much more rare when debugging issues.

2.1 - Install Docker & Docker-Compose

The only dependencies for this project are Docker and docker-compose, the later of which is an officially supported tool for defining multiple container configurations to compose into a single application stack.

Install Docker -
Install Docker Compose -

2.2 - Setup Project Directories

Create a base directory (say guttenberg_search) for the project. To organize our project we'll work within two main subdirectories.

  • /public - Store files for the frontend Vue.js webapp.
  • /server - Server-side Node.js source code

2.3 - Add Docker-Compose Config

Next, we'll create a docker-compose.yml file to define each container in our application stack.

  1. gs-api - The Node.js container for the backend application logic.
  2. gs-frontend - An Ngnix container for serving the frontend webapp files.
  3. gs-search - An Elasticsearch container for storing and searching data.
version: '3' services: api: # Node.js App container_name: gs-api build: . ports: - "3000:3000" # Expose API port - "9229:9229" # Expose Node process debug port (disable in production) environment: # Set ENV vars - NODE_ENV=local - ES_HOST=elasticsearch - PORT=3000 volumes: # Attach local book data directory - ./books:/usr/src/app/books frontend: # Nginx Server For Frontend App container_name: gs-frontend image: nginx volumes: # Serve local "public" dir - ./public:/usr/share/nginx/html ports: - "8080:80" # Forward site to localhost:8080 elasticsearch: # Elasticsearch Instance container_name: gs-search image: volumes: # Persist ES data in seperate "esdata" volume - esdata:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data environment: - bootstrap.memory_lock=true - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m" - discovery.type=single-node ports: # Expose Elasticsearch ports - "9300:9300" - "9200:9200" volumes: # Define seperate volume for Elasticsearch data esdata:

This file defines our entire application stack - no need to install Elasticsearch, Node, or Nginx on your local system. Each container is forwarding ports to the host system (localhost), in order for us to access and debug the Node API, Elasticsearch instance, and fronted web app from our host machine.

2.4 - Add Dockerfile

We are using official prebuilt images for Nginx and Elasticsearch, but we'll need to build our own image for the Node.js app.

Define a simple Dockerfile configuration in the application root directory.

# Use Node v8.9.0 LTS
FROM node:carbon # Setup app working directory
WORKDIR /usr/src/app # Copy package.json and package-lock.json
COPY package*.json ./ # Install app dependencies
RUN npm install # Copy sourcecode
COPY . . # Start app
CMD [ "npm", "start" ]

This Docker configuration extends the official Node.js image, copies our application source code, and installs the NPM dependencies within the container.

We'll also add a .dockerignore file to avoid copying unneeded files into the container.


Note that we're not copying the node_modules directory into our container - this is because we'll be running npm install from within the container build process. Attempting to copy the node_modules from the host system into a container can cause errors since some packages need to be specifically built for certain operating systems. For instance, installing the bcrypt package on macOS and attempting to copy that module directly to an Ubuntu container will not work because bcyrpt relies on a binary that needs to be built specifically for each operating system.

2.5 - Add Base Files

In order to test out the configuration, we'll need to add some placeholder files to the app directories.

Add this base HTML file at public/index.html

<html><body>Hello World From The Frontend Container</body></html>

Next, add the placeholder Node.js app file at server/app.js.

const Koa = require('koa')
const app = new Koa() app.use(async (ctx, next) => { ctx.body = 'Hello World From the Backend Container'
}) const port = process.env.PORT || 3000 app.listen(port, err => { if (err) console.error(err) console.log(`App Listening on Port ${port}`)

Finally, add our package.json Node app configuration.

{ "name": "guttenberg-search", "version": "0.0.1", "description": "Source code for Elasticsearch tutorial using 100 classic open source books.", "scripts": { "start": "node --inspect= server/app.js" }, "repository": { "type": "git", "url": "git+" }, "author": "[email protected]", "license": "MIT", "bugs": { "url": "" }, "homepage": "", "dependencies": { "elasticsearch": "13.3.1", "joi": "13.0.1", "koa": "2.4.1", "koa-joi-validate": "0.5.1", "koa-router": "7.2.1" }

This file defines the application start command and the Node.js package dependencies.

Note - You don't have to run npm install - the dependencies will be installed inside the container when it is built.

2.6 - Try it Out

Everything is in place now to test out each component of the app. From the base directory, run docker-compose build, which will build our Node.js application container.

docker build output

Next, run docker-compose up to launch our entire application stack.

docker compose output

This step might take a few minutes since Docker has to download the base images for each container. In subsequent runs, starting the app should be nearly instantaneous, since the required images will have already been downloaded.

Try visiting localhost:8080 in your browser - you should see a simple "Hello World" webpage.

frontend sample output

Visit localhost:3000 to verify that our Node server returns it's own "Hello World" message.

backend sample output

Finally, visit localhost:9200 to check that Elasticsearch is running. It should return information similar to this.

{ "name" : "SLTcfpI", "cluster_name" : "docker-cluster", "cluster_uuid" : "iId8e0ZeS_mgh9ALlWQ7-w", "version" : { "number" : "6.1.1", "build_hash" : "bd92e7f", "build_date" : "2017-12-17T20:23:25.338Z", "build_snapshot" : false, "lucene_version" : "7.1.0", "minimum_wire_compatibility_version" : "5.6.0", "minimum_index_compatibility_version" : "5.0.0" }, "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"

If all three URLs display data successfully, congrats! The entire containerized stack is running, so now we can move on to the fun part.

3 - Connect To Elasticsearch

The first thing that we'll need to do in our app is connect to our local Elasticsearch instance.

3.0 - Add ES Connection Module

Add the following Elasticsearch initialization code to a new file server/connection.js.

const elasticsearch = require('elasticsearch') // Core ES variables for this project
const index = 'library'
const type = 'novel'
const port = 9200
const host = process.env.ES_HOST || 'localhost'
const client = new elasticsearch.Client({ host: { host, port } }) /** Check the ES connection status */
async function checkConnection () { let isConnected = false while (!isConnected) { console.log('Connecting to ES') try { const health = await{}) console.log(health) isConnected = true } catch (err) { console.log('Connection Failed, Retrying...', err) } }
} checkConnection()

Let's rebuild our Node app now that we've made changes, using docker-compose build. Next, run docker-compose up -d to start the application stack as a background daemon process.

With the app started, run docker exec gs-api "node" "server/connection.js" on the command line in order to run our script within the container. You should see some system output similar to the following.

{ cluster_name: 'docker-cluster', status: 'yellow', timed_out: false, number_of_nodes: 1, number_of_data_nodes: 1, active_primary_shards: 1, active_shards: 1, relocating_shards: 0, initializing_shards: 0, unassigned_shards: 1, delayed_unassigned_shards: 0, number_of_pending_tasks: 0, number_of_in_flight_fetch: 0, task_max_waiting_in_queue_millis: 0, active_shards_percent_as_number: 50 }

Go ahead and remove the checkConnection() call at the bottom before moving on, since in our final app we'll be making that call from outside the connection module.

3.1 - Add Helper Function To Reset Index

In server/connection.js add the following function below checkConnection, in order to provide an easy way to reset our Elasticsearch index.

/** Clear the index, recreate it, and add mappings */
async function resetIndex () { if (await client.indices.exists({ index })) { await client.indices.delete({ index }) } await client.indices.create({ index }) await putBookMapping()

3.2 - Add Book Schema

Next, we'll want to add a "mapping" for the book data schema. Add the following function below resetIndex in server/connection.js.

/** Add book section schema mapping to ES */
async function putBookMapping () { const schema = { title: { type: 'keyword' }, author: { type: 'keyword' }, location: { type: 'integer' }, text: { type: 'text' } } return client.indices.putMapping({ index, type, body: { properties: schema } })

Here we are defining a mapping for the book index. An Elasticsearch index is roughly analogous to a SQL table or a MongoDB collection. Adding a mapping allows us to specify each field and datatype for the stored documents. Elasticsearch is schema-less, so we don't technically need to add a mapping, but doing so will give us more control over how the data is handled.

For instance - we're assigning the keyword type to the "title" and "author" fields, and the text type to the "text" field. Doing so will cause the search engine to treat these string fields differently - During a search, the engine will search within the text field for potential matches, whereas keyword fields will be matched based on their full content. This might seem like a minor distinction, but it can have a huge impact on the behavior and speed of different searches.

Export the exposed properties and functions at the bottom of the file, so that they can be accessed by other modules in our app.

module.exports = { client, index, type, checkConnection, resetIndex

4 - Load The Raw Data

We'll be using data from Project Gutenberg - an online effort dedicated to providing free, digital copies of books within the public domain. For this project, we'll be populating our library with 100 classic books, including texts such as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Treasure Island, The Count of Monte Cristo, Around the World in 80 Days, Romeo and Juliet, and The Odyssey.

Book Covers

4.1 - Download Book Files

I've zipped the 100 books into a file that you can download here -

Extract this file into a books/ directory in your project.

If you want, you can do this by using the following commands (requires wget and "The Unarchiver" CLI).


4.2 - Preview A Book

Try opening one of the book files, say 219-0.txt. You'll notice that it starts with an open access license, followed by some lines identifying the book title, author, release dates, language and character encoding.

Title: Heart of Darkness Author: Joseph Conrad Release Date: February 1995 [EBook #219]
Last Updated: September 7, 2016 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8

After these lines comes *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART OF DARKNESS ***, after which the book content actually starts.

If you scroll to the end of the book you'll see the matching message *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART OF DARKNESS ***, which is followed by a much more detailed version of the book's license.

In the next steps, we'll programmatically parse the book metadata from this header and extract the book content from between the *** START OF and ***END OF place markers.

4.3 - Read Data Dir

Let's write a script to read the content of each book and to add that data to Elasticsearch. We'll define a new Javascript file server/load_data.js in order to perform these operations.

First, we'll obtain a list of every file within the books/ data directory.

Add the following content to server/load_data.js.

const fs = require('fs')
const path = require('path')
const esConnection = require('./connection') /** Clear ES index, parse and index all files from the books directory */
async function readAndInsertBooks () { try { // Clear previous ES index await esConnection.resetIndex() // Read books directory let files = fs.readdirSync('./books').filter(file => file.slice(-4) === '.txt') console.log(`Found ${files.length} Files`) // Read each book file, and index each paragraph in elasticsearch for (let file of files) { console.log(`Reading File - ${file}`) const filePath = path.join('./books', file) const { title, author, paragraphs } = parseBookFile(filePath) await insertBookData(title, author, paragraphs) } } catch (err) { console.error(err) }
} readAndInsertBooks()

We'll use a shortcut command to rebuild our Node.js app and update the running container.

Run docker-compose up -d --build to update the application. This is a shortcut for running docker-compose build and docker-compose up -d.

docker build output

Rundocker exec gs-api "node" "server/load_data.js" in order to run our load_data script within the container. You should see the Elasticsearch status output, followed by Found 100 Books.

After this, the script will exit due to an error because we're calling a helper function (parseBookFile) that we have not yet defined.

docker exec output

4.4 - Read Data File

Next, we'll read the metadata and content for each book.

Define a new function in server/load_data.js.

/** Read an individual book text file, and extract the title, author, and paragraphs */
function parseBookFile (filePath) { // Read text file const book = fs.readFileSync(filePath, 'utf8') // Find book title and author const title = book.match(/^Title:\s(.+)$/m)[1] const authorMatch = book.match(/^Author:\s(.+)$/m) const author = (!authorMatch || authorMatch[1].trim() === '') ? 'Unknown Author' : authorMatch[1] console.log(`Reading Book - ${title} By ${author}`) // Find Guttenberg metadata header and footer const startOfBookMatch = book.match(/^\*{3}\s*START OF (THIS|THE) PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK.+\*{3}$/m) const startOfBookIndex = startOfBookMatch.index + startOfBookMatch[0].length const endOfBookIndex = book.match(/^\*{3}\s*END OF (THIS|THE) PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK.+\*{3}$/m).index // Clean book text and split into array of paragraphs const paragraphs = book .slice(startOfBookIndex, endOfBookIndex) // Remove Guttenberg header and footer .split(/\n\s+\n/g) // Split each paragraph into it's own array entry .map(line => line.replace(/\r\n/g, ' ').trim()) // Remove paragraph line breaks and whitespace .map(line => line.replace(/_/g, '')) // Guttenberg uses "_" to signify italics. We'll remove it, since it makes the raw text look messy. .filter((line) => (line && line !== '')) // Remove empty lines console.log(`Parsed ${paragraphs.length} Paragraphs\n`) return { title, author, paragraphs }

This function performs a few important tasks.

  1. Read book text from the file system.
  2. Use regular expressions (check out this post for a primer on using regex) to parse the book title and author.
  3. Identify the start and end of the book content, by matching on the all-caps "Project Guttenberg" header and footer.
  4. Extract the book text content.
  5. Split each paragraph into its own array.
  6. Clean up the text and remove blank lines.

As a return value, we'll form an object containing the book's title, author, and an array of paragraphs within the book.

Run docker-compose up -d --build and docker exec gs-api "node" "server/load_data.js" again, and you should see the same output as before, this time with three extra lines at the end of the output.

docker exec output