V4 ability to use the core logic in a standalone way

[JoelPintoRibeiro]

The problem

With the V3 version, we can use the @searchkit/sdk to create custom filters and trigger searches manually.

With the V4 version, it seems we have less control over the actions performed, and in the UI, it's mainly tied to other frameworks like InstantSearch for triggering the search.

Environment

• Searchkit version (or git revision) that exhibits the issue: 4.x
• Last Searchkit version that did not exhibit the issue : 3.x

Details

In our use case, we would like to create a wrapper around the searchkit library:
We have a big search screen with many filters that can be boolean, numeric, range, prefix, or exact match and that, in the end, can generate a complex query including many OR and AND operators.

We don't use facets, so in our case, that's not a requirement.

But in my first attempt at using the V4 version, I didn't find how I could have control over the pagination, trigger searches, or modify filters on the fly.

In a perfect world, we would love to have a kind of "searchkit/core" that we can interact with to trigger search, customize the query/filter parameters, and generate the output query depending on our needs (prefix, match, multi, etc.).

I hope I was clear enough; otherwise, I can provide more details!

Thanks for the support ! :)

[joemcelroy]

Thanks for the issue! Will come back over thoughts.

[ColeDCrawford]

Would love to hear thoughts on this, being able to trigger searches manually and some of these other actions would be great

[joemcelroy]

Hey so haven't progressed further on this but its worth noting that you can also use algolia's JS helper too, which is a high level client. https://community.algolia.com/algoliasearch-helper-js/

I will document this more in docs if this sounds like a good outcome.

A future will look like a proper Searchkit client, very similar to algolia's JS helper.

import Client from '@searchkit/instantsearch-client'

const sk = new Searchkit({
  connection: {
    host: 'http://localhost:9200',
    auth: {
      username: "elastic",
      password: "changeme"
    }
  },
  search_settings: {
    search_attributes: [{ field: 'title', weight: 3 }, 'actors', 'plot'],
    result_attributes: ['title', 'actors', 'poster', 'plot'],
    highlight_attributes: ['title'],
    facet_attributes: [
      { attribute: 'actors', field: 'actors.keyword', type: 'string' },
      { attribute: 'imdbrating', type: 'numeric', field: 'imdbrating' }
    ]
  }
})

const searchClient = Client(sk);

var helper = algoliasearchHelper(searchClient, 'imdb_movies', {
  facets: ['imdbrating'],
  disjunctiveFacets: ['actors']
});
helper.on('result', function(event) {
  console.log(event.results);
});
helper
  .toggleFacetRefinement('actors', 'arnold schwarzenegger')
  .search();