Hey everybody! As some of you may know, I [recently joined Meilisearch](/blog/caro/)s a Developer Advocate. Part of my job is to help the community by answering questions, so my priority over the last few months has been to get to know Meilisearch. I believe the best way to learn new software is to use it just as any developer would: to build something. So, I set out to make a demo.

<Callout>
  This demo was created when the latest version of Meilisearch was v0.19, some of the workarounds described in this blogpost are no longer necessary due to the addition of new features in more recent versions of Meilisearch.
</Callout>

Meilisearch x MoMA
------------------

The first step was to find a nice dataset that I enjoyed working with. After several unsuccessful attempts to tame some unstructured datasets, I stumbled upon the [repository of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)](https://github.com/MuseumofModernArt/collection). What a lucky find! They have two datasets: artists and artworks. I decided to go for the artworks dataset since it has all the essential information about each art piece: title, artist, dimensions, medium, even the artist’s biography. But the best part is that it’s available in JSON format! No conversion needed, no MongoDB dump to restore, no scraping: Meilisearch ready 😀

I used [Meilisearch JavaScript](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch-js) to create the indexes, add the documents, and customize the settings. For the front-end, I decided to go for [Instant Meilisearch](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch-js-plugins/tree/main/packages/instant-meilisearch) combined with [Vue InstantSearch](https://github.com/algolia/vue-instantsearch/) as described in the [meilisearch-vue repository](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch-vue/). I’m a little lazy, so if I find a tool that provides nice results effortlessly, I will use it! Fortunately, InstantSearch provides all the front-end tools to customize the search environment at will, so you can experience the power of Meilisearch and its search-as-you-type feature with just a few lines of code. Finally, I tried to add some decent styling, but it’s not my forte 😅 I apologize in advance for the visual design!

**You can see the result** [**here**](https://moma.meilisearch.com/)**.**

![Web interface with searchbar and results for the query "Picasso"](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/Capture_d_e_cran_2021_02_18_a_16_40_57_41c7a62d0f.png)

Solving Problems
----------------

So, I had found a dataset, indexed it in a Meilisearch instance, and set up a front-end for the search. All done, right? Not exactly; now came the time to iterate and make the search results feel good.

I was lucky to find a structured JSON dataset that worked effortlessly with Meilisearch. Nevertheless, I had to make some small changes to better display the results. Since Meilisearch’s [automatic highlighting](https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/learn/what_is_meilisearch/features#highlighting) doesn’t work on query results that are stored in an array, I had to **convert array values into strings** before adding them.

I also wanted to allow users to **sort the results by date**. Since the date field didn’t have a standard format, I had to retrieve the year and store it in a new \`sortByDate\` field. Then there was another problem: Meilisearch doesn’t support sorting at query time (**at least, not yet**)! To circumvent that and implement this feature, I created two more indexes with custom ranking rules desc(DateToSortBy) and asc(DateToSortBy). Every time you change the sorting option in the drop-down menu, Meilisearch is actually searching in a completely different index, but it’s so fast that the change is not visible to the human eye 🤯

Here you can see the sorting in action:

![Web interface with the query "Picasso" sorting by ascending and then descending date gif](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/sorting2_f59a0e2432.gif)

🧐 You might have noticed that I said Meilisearch doesn’t support query-time sorting **yet**—that’s because it’s one of the most requested features on [our public roadmap](https://roadmap.meilisearch.com/tabs/1-under-consideration), and it’s now under consideration 🥳 So if you haven’t done it yet, take a look at Meilisearch’s roadmap and vote for your favorite feature or submit your own ideas! **👉 Update note:** query-time sorting was released with Meilisearch v0.22.

The most challenging part of creating this demo was working with an unknown dataset of 138,151 documents, because the large number of documents makes it difficult to know the possible values and length of the different fields. I first wanted the user to be able to filter results by \`medium\` (e.g.  “photograph” or “paint”). That is, until I realized some of the artworks had \`medium\` fields that were many lines long! Take this one for example:

> "H (vol. IX): Cover with lithographed manuscript text by Kliun on front; 1 lithographed illustration by Terent'ev; lithographed manuscript text. L (vol. XIII): Cover with lithographed illustration and manuscript design by Kirill Zdanevich on front; lithographed manuscript and typed text. M (vol. XIV): Cover with lithographed manuscript design and illustration on front by Kirill Zdanevich; lithographed manuscript and typed text. P (vol. XVII): Cover with lithographed manuscript design on front by Goncharova; and lithographed manuscript text by Mikhail Pustynin and Olga Olesha-Suok"

Can you imagine having this as a [facet filter](https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/learn/advanced/faceted_search)? Not very nice for the UI…

Close to Perfect
----------------

The easiest part of making this demo was setting up Meilisearch. Once I decided which attributes I wanted to be [displayed](https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/learn/configuration/displayed_searchable_attributes#displayed-fields) and [searchable](https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/learn/configuration/displayed_searchable_attributes#searchable-fields), the rest was a piece of cake. Aside from the highlighting and sorting issues mentioned above, the last thing I changed was [the attribute ranking order](https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/learn/core_concepts/relevancy#attribute-ranking-order). By default, the attribute ranking order is generated automatically based on the attributes' order of appearance in the first document indexed. In my case, the first attribute was \`title\`, which meant that artwork with matching query terms in the \`title\` field topped the results list. This delivered decent results, but I was pretty sure I could do better.

I not only had to consider which attributes are most important for this particular dataset; I also had to think about what types of queries are more likely to be made. If a user queries for a specific art piece using its title, he will get relevant results because the words used are unlikely to be found in lots of other fields. However, if a user queries the name of a famous artist, it is very possible to find that name in an artwork title, for example as a tribute. So I decided to place \`artist\` at the top of [the searchable attributes list](https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/learn/configuration/displayed_searchable_attributes#the-searchableattributes-list). Before I made the change, this is what you would find among the first results when searching for “Van Gogh” :

![Information and image of a litograph called "Do You Leave without seeing the 150 Van Gogh's" by Willem Jacob Henri Berend Sandberg](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/Capture_d_e_cran_2021_02_22_a_11_34_08_073b869794.png)

As you can see, it’s an art piece created by an artist named Willem Jacob Henri Berend Sandberg where the name “Van Gogh” appears in the title, but it’s not an actual Van Gogh.

Now, after changing the order of the searchable attributes in [the settings](https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/reference/api/settings#searchable-attributes), the first result is well and truly a piece of art created by Vincent Van Gogh:

![Information and image of the litograph "The Potato Eaters" by Vincent van Gogh](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/Capture_d_e_cran_2021_02_22_a_11_41_41_7bdabf659b.png)

  
Pretty amazing how a simple change like this can impact the search results. Meilisearch is ultra relevant out-of-the-box, but it lets you tune the relevancy of the results according to your needs, and that is essential to provide an awesome experience for the end user.

An Open-Source Museum Experience
--------------------------------

The demo source code is available on [GitHub](https://github.com/meilisearch/demo-MoMA/). Feel free to play with it and show me what you can do! 😁

How cool is it that we’re able to access this extraordinary catalog? Thanks to MoMA’s generosity, you can explore the museum from anywhere in the world. And now, thanks to Meilisearch, it’s only 50 milliseconds away 🚀

* * *

_Photo by [Robert Bye](https://unsplash.com/@robertbye?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)_

Meilisearch: a blank canvas

Happy New Year, Everyone! 2021 brings [a new version](https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch/releases/tag/v0.18.0?ref=blog.meilisearch.com) of Meilisearch. How good is that?

In this release, we have fixed some bugs and raised the default payload size when you add documents to Meilisearch. The star of the show, however, is the **new tokenizer**.

Our main goal is to offer the **best search experience**, and a good tokenizer is critical to having quality search results. We are very proud of our core team and our contributors—they worked hard, and they delivered! Let’s take a closer look at it.

## New Tokenizer
The **tokenizer** is sort of like the brain of Meilisearch: it understands how languages work and adapts the way documents are stored in Meilisearch accordingly. Without a tokenizer, we wouldn't be able to know where a word starts and where it ends. We wouldn’t be able to understand what a user asks for when performing a search.

### A Closer Look
The tokenizer’s role is to **find and retrieve all the words in a string based on the language’s particularities**. Every language requires a unique process. For example:

- In **Latin-based languages**, words are generally separated by spaces.
- In **Chinese**, splitting words is more complicated.

Meilisearch’s new tokenizer goes **field by field**, determining the most likely language for the field and running a different pipeline for each language. Since the tokenizer is **modular**, adding new languages is much easier than before.

The new tokenizer might not feel different for **Latin-based alphabets** such as English, but it should dramatically improve the experience for our **Chinese users**.

## The Evolution of Meilisearch in Chinese

Before, the tokenizer considered **one Hanzi character (Chinese character) as one word**. The new tokenizer:

- Identifies **Chinese words** made of one or more characters.
- Assesses the **distance between matched query terms** more accurately (see: [proximity rule](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/core_concepts/relevancy.html#proximity-rule)).
- **Positively improves search relevancy**.
- A **single search query** now gives results in both **traditional and simplified Chinese**.

## Increased Max Payload Size

In previous versions of Meilisearch, the **default limit** of a document payload was **10MB**. We have increased this limit to **100MB**. Of course, you still have the possibility to change this limit.

```bash
$ ./meilisearch --http-payload-size-limit=209715200
# Change limit to 200MB
```


## Bug Fixes

- Meilisearch now **correctly adds attributes** to `searchableAttributes`, even when they have been added to `attributesForFaceting` first.
- Attributes are now added to `searchableAttributes` **in order of appearance**, as intended.
- When no attribute is set to be displayed, Meilisearch **returns an empty object **`` instead of an error.


## Other Changes

- We’ve made some modifications to our **testing suite**.
- **Dump tests can now run in parallel**.
- Most of the **dependencies have been updated**.

For a **specific list of changes and commits**, please check the [release notes](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/releases).


## Contributions

We are fortunate to have this **amazingly supportive community**.

Special thanks to:

- [**@piaoger**](https://github.com/piaoger) for beta-testing the new tokenizer.
- [**@woshilapin**](https://github.com/woshilapin) for improving the CI.
- [**@sanders41**](https://github.com/sanders41) for increasing the default payload size.

We would also like to thank **all the contributors** who help maintain the toolkits that make Meilisearch easier to use.

Your involvement **means a lot to us**! 💜

---

## 💬 Get Involved!

We are always eager to hear our users’ and contributors’ **suggestions**! Come and talk with us using the method you prefer:

- [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/discussions)
- [Discord](https://discord.meilisearch.com)
- [Twitter](https://twitter.com/meilisearch)

🚀 Happy coding!


What's new in v0.18.0

**tl;dr:** We recently raised 1,5M euros from LocalGlobe, Seedcamp, Kima & Tiny.vc. This funding will allow us to focus on building a community of early adopters & contributors around our open search engine [Meilisearch](https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch).

We are still at the very beginning of our open source adventure and we are thrilled to see that more and more people believe in this project. This is our first fundraise and it means the world for the Meili team 🎉

### Meili got funded!

Meili SAS (the company) was created in November of 2018 with the idea of building an alternative to existing search engine APIs like Algolia. After some successes and failures as a team and company, we decided to raise some money to keep focus on building Meilisearch and its ecosystem.

We believe that an exceptionalsearch experience on websites and applications should be the norm, not an exclusive feature. Thus we are building the most straightforward technology for developers to offer state-of-the-art search to their users, scaling from the tiniest of operations all the way up to enterprise.

![](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/david_armstrong_srp_E_a5_W418_unsplash_beb73be50e.jpg)

How we got there
----------------

Meilisearch has been open source since the [earliest days](/blog/open-source-or-not/)f its development. As developers, we made our project accessible on GitHub from day one but without the idea of being an "open source company". First and foremost we set out to make a simpler alternative to Algolia for smaller businesses who needed something more developer-friendly and affordable.

After describing our project to many developers, we quickly realize that one of the main differences from Algolia was that Meilisearch is open source. Still we weren't using open source as a force.

In late 2019, after some substantial discussion within the team, we decided to [fully commit to orienting the business around open source](/blog/to-open-source-and-beyond/)e could not quietly bootstrap anymore since we decided to build a community around our project to get feedback and contributions from external developers.

We wrote our [Beta release blog post](/blog/meilisearch-beta-release/)or Meilisearch in November of 2019. Since then we have been working hard at making Meilisearch the new obvious choice for developers when it comes to building a search box.

Charlotte, who joined us in August of 2019, did an incredible job of directing the writing and making of our [documentation](https://docs.meilisearch.com/) while Clémentine, who joined us one month later, took charge of developing the [SDKs and integrations](https://github.com/meilisearch/integration-guides) to ease the use of Meilisearch.

Fundraise
---------

In late 2019 we began to meet with investors because we knew we wouldn't be able to develop the business without help from industry veterans.

The first key meeting that we had was with [Alexis from Kima](https://twitter.com/ale6_) who helped us make our pitch understandable to VCs. Alexis was presented to us as `THE investor who understand tech` in Paris. Not only did he understood what we wanted to build, he also did an amazing job at introing us to relevant funds regarding our stage & business 😁  
  
Then from meeting to meeting we met the different persons we are now working with: [Mish](https://twitter.com/mishmashkautsan?lang=en) & [Louis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/knightwebb/?originalSubdomain=uk) from [LocalGlobe](https://localglobe.vc/) as lead investor, [Sia](https://twitter.com/siahouchangnia?lang=en) from [SeedCamp](https://seedcamp.com/), [Alexis](https://twitter.com/ale6_) from [Kima](https://www.kimaventures.com/) & [Philipp](https://twitter.com/pmoe?lang=en) from [Tiny.vc](https://www.tiny.vc/).

The deal we made with the VCs is that we develop the community and the usage around Meilisearch while we better understand the use-cases of our search engine. From there we will be able to generate revenue. [Our business plan is publicly available](/blog/meilisearch-open-business-plan-v0-1/)s a iteratively developed document.

What's next?
------------

### Core features

We made an [open roadmap](http://roadmap.meilisearch.com/) and we will publish more roadmap communications in the coming weeks to get better feedback on what developers need in a search engine API.

There are some features that we know we need to build in order to be competitive as a search engine backend (basic analytics and authorization system 🚧) that are already planned. We are also discussing with developers & companies to gain more insight on features that should be game-changers in the enterprise search industry!

### Integrations & Documentation

All of this work around Meilisearch would not make any sense if Meilisearch is not used. To ease the integration of Meilisearch we are building different [SDKs](https://github.com/meilisearch/integration-guides) in different languages and improving our [documentation](https://docs.meilisearch.com/) every week.

We want anyone to be able to integrate Meilisearch in any common programming environment in less than 5 minutes. Today, with our most mature front- and back-end libraries you should be able to setup a proof-of-concept in less than an hour. We are hard at work shaving off those remaining 55 minutes to get where we want to be.

### Open source & values

As we learn to build a commercial open source software company, we are thriving for transparency on everything we do. To raise awareness around open source sustainability, Erlend is publishing a podcast called [Value in Open](/blog/value-in-open-1-posthog/)e already have our first episode released, and the second one should follow shortly 😁

![](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/kelly_sikkema_XX_2_W_Tb_Lr3r8_unsplash_1_877c2e9d79.jpg)

  
We are delighted and excited about the future of Meilisearch 😁 if you want to reach us for anything, [please feel free to do so](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/contact.html)!

Meili raises 1.5M€ for open source search in Rust

Announcing Meilisearch v0.13.0  

=================================

Meilisearch v0.13.0 introduces a bunch of new features and changes. Bugs have  
been fixed and some behavior have changed for more consistency, here what's new in meilisearch:

Placeholder search
------------------

  
We've been asked for a placeholder search feature a lot, and it's landed in  
v0.13.0. It allows you to perform a search without specifying query strings,  
and get "placeholder" search results. The results are sorted according to the  
ranking rules you specified, and it supports faceting and filtering.

Post Route search
-----------------

  
A new route has been added to allow you to perform search with a `POST` route instead of `GET`. This will improve performance for searches that require token  
authentication, by allowing [preflight request](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Preflight_request) caching.  
  
This is now the recommended way to perform searches with Meilisearch.

New settings behavior
---------------------

  
We have made a couple of changes to the way settings work in order to make them easier to use and intuitive. `searchableAttributes` and `displayedAttributes` now default to all attributes (`*` ). This means that unless you specify otherwise, all attributes will be searchable by default. This removes the need for the `acceptNewField`, that no longer exists.

Sys-info route removal
----------------------

  
We decided not to support the sys-info route anymore, and remove it. This was motivated by the fact that there already are better tools to do this job, and it was not worth the time maintaining this part of the code.

Check that Meilisearch is launched with the correct database version
--------------------------------------------------------------------

  
We added a check to ensure that Meilisearch is launched with a database that's compatible with the engine version. Meilisearch will refuse to start unless versions match.

Bug fixes
---------

*   `facetDistribution` returning the values in lowercase, instead of the correct case.
*   Bug that caused Meilisearch to add documents with the same document id twice, if they were added in the same batch.

Special thanks
--------------

  
We'd like to give a special thank to our external contributors on this release.  
Their involvement means a lot to us!

*   [@balajisivaraman](https://github.com/balajisivaraman) for his help on making our tests faster and cleaner
*   [@Rio](https://github.com/Rio) for his work on authentication and analytics
*   [@aeriksson](https://github.com/aeriksson) for finding and fixing typos in our code

If you feel like contributing, and don't know where to start, ping us on [slack](https://slack.meilisearch.com/).

What's new in 0.13.0

Value in Open #1 - PostHog

The v0.11 version of Meilisearch introduces a highly anticipated feature: **faceted search**. Every modern search experience includes faceted search. We were eager to offer this experience to our users, and we are excited to have finally achieved this critical step.

Faceted search
--------------

If you're not familiar: Faceted search lets you search by including or excluding some attributes from categories called facets. You have probably come across faceted search during your online consumerist life. It is often presented as a sidebar with checkboxes. Giving me, as a woman, the possibility to show only 8.5 size shoes and see my possible choices decrease to oblivion.

![](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/Screenshot_2020_06_03_at_15_00_21_89a6e9099b.png)

In this case the facet is `size`, the attribute is `UK 8 ½`, and the number of products found `2`

Faceted search is not easy to understand. It is often confused with Filters. However, filtering is used to filter the returned results by adding constraints. **Facets**, on the other hand, are used to categorize the data into subsets that will be searched upon: **they reduce the number of documents to process**.

We didn’t see any reason to reinvent the wheel; if you’re familiar with how Algolia does facets, you’ll see we’ve gone with a very similar API. We improved a bit on the usage to reduce furthermore all possible friction in the hope that it is accessible for all users.

To set up faceted search, only two steps are required:

**Add facets in the settings**. For an attribute to be used as a facet it must be added in the `attributesForFaceting` list.

```bash
$ curl \
  -X POST 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/settings' \
  --data '{
      "attributesForFaceting": [
          "director",
          "genres"
      ]
  }'
```

**Declare** director and genres as **facets**.

**Use facets during search**. By using the query parameter `facetFilters` it is possible to add the chosen facets attributes to narrow down the results:

```bash
$ curl --get 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/search' \
    --data-urlencode 'q=Get' \
    --data-urlencode 'facetFilters=["director:Jordan Peele"]'
```

Search for movies by a specific director

This is all explained in our [guide on Faceting](https://docs.meilisearch.com/reference/features/faceted_search.html#faceted-search).

SSL support
-----------

All the configuration options to enable SSL are now available.

[Learn more about it in our configuration guide.](https://docs.meilisearch.com/reference/features/configuration.html#ssl-authentication-path)

Max payload size
----------------

In the early versions of Meilisearch, there was no limit to the size of the body Meilisearch accepted. This version introduces the standard default limit of a **maximum payload of 10 Megabytes** and the possibility of changing the limit.

```bash
$ ./meilisearch --http-payload-size-limit=107374182400
```

Change the upload limit to 100 Megabytes

Improved analytics
------------------

To further understand how our users use Meilisearch and how to improve it, more analytics are added.

[A complete list can be found here.](https://docs.meilisearch.com/reference/features/configuration.html#analytics)

Users can deactivate analytics by using the following command line option:

```json
$ ./meilisearch --no-analytics
```

Conclusion
----------

Those are the main changes in this version. For a more thorough list, please visit the [changelogs of this version](https://github.com/meilisearch/MeiliSearch/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#v011).

We are eager to hear some feedback. Feel free to come and [talk to us any way you prefer](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/contact.html). We are thrilled by all the support given to our search engine and the never-ending growth in users and stars.

Thanks a lot,

The Meilisearch team and the girl with big feet. 🦶

####

Meilisearch v0.11: What’s new?

> This is the spiritual sequel to our [Open Business Plan](/blog/meilisearch-open-business-plan-v0-1/)hese open documents are continuously iterated on in our publicly available [Project Handbook](https://www.notion.so/meilisearch/Project-Handbook-e818a836dd3f4df1bde7c3989c9a0ae4).

Being a young project, our values are not yet fully formed. As such, we take our value cues from established organizations that we are closely aligned with. To date, these are: Mozilla, World Wide Web Foundation, Open Organization (Red Hat) and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

With the decades of experience and thinking that has gone into the principles we've adopted from the giants, we found it difficult to add anything original or especially representative of Meilisearch as a company. But in the past week, a recurring theme in tech and open source circles resurfaced once more on the Rust Users forum: [Can technology be apolitical?](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-says-tech-will-always-be-political/43627)

The Meilisearch team unanimously agrees that the answer to this question is a resounding **'no'**. For some apt argumentation in favor of this conclusion, see the posts of [XAMPPRocky](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-says-tech-will-always-be-political/43627/15?u=erlend_sh), [kornel](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-says-tech-will-always-be-political/43627/17?u=erlend_sh) and [IsaacWoods](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-says-tech-will-always-be-political/43627/27?u=erlend_sh).

> _XAMPPRocky said:_  
>   
> The Rust project is a real world community and organisation of people that works on building new versions and provides support. Which is done mostly by volunteers and a lot of whom are people who are underrepresented in tech. This organisation of volunteers has the agency to try to build the type of community it wants to be a part of and participate in. Since the very start the Rust project has had a [Code Of Conduct](https://www.rust-lang.org/policies/code-of-conduct) which states the following in the very first line.  
>   
> "We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all"  
>   
> This is an inherently political statement when we live in a world where there has been significant systemic injustice against people of colour and queer folk, both in tech and in the world at large. Working towards providing a welcoming environment for all requires an active voice to push back.

See also the [introductory text](https://firstdonoharm.dev/) of the Hippocratic License:

> Politics and software are so tangled that they cannot be reasonably separated. Consider the GPS software that tells you how to get to a restaurant; it’s also used to direct military drones to their targets. The facial recognition software  that unlocks your phone? It’s being  used to record, track, and target the activities of political  dissenters.

The goal of this declaration is to clearly state our strongly held principles, and the way we want to contribute to our environment. Thinking of technology as inherently apolitical is incompatible with our values as a company, and  we will focus our efforts on interacting and collaborating with those who share this principle with us.

* * *

Our Core Values (v0.1)
======================

Homegrown Principles
--------------------

As we mature as a project, our ideological identity will become more defined. We are starting with a single principle of our own making:

### Technology is political

Every new creation (for work, art, pleasure...) is necessarily based in previous knowledge, paradigms and tools that aren't anything but the  result of political and social constructions and history. The scope of  "what is possible" is necessarily defined by how our field has evolved  in a determined economic and political context, and any intention to transform it is necessarily political.

By acknowledging this, we recognize that neutrality is not an option for us as a values-driven company and participant in the open source movement.

Mozilla Manifesto
-----------------

We are committed to an internet that catalyzes collaboration among diverse communities working together for the common good.

We are inextricably linked to the Mozilla Foundation through our deep involvement with Rust. We greatly admire the Mozilla foundation’s work and we commit ourselves to upholding the 10 principles set forth in their [Manifesto](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/). Especially relevant to us are principles 5-9:

> **Principle 5**  
> Individuals must have the ability to shape the internet and their own experiences on it.

> **Principle 6**  
> The effectiveness of the internet as a public resource depends upon interoperability (protocols, data formats, content), innovation and decentralized participation worldwide.

> **Principle 7**  
> Free and open source software promotes the development of the internet as a public resource.

> **Principle 8**  
> Transparent community-based processes promote participation, accountability and trust.

> **Principle 9**  
> Commercial involvement in the development of the internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical.

Contract for The Web
--------------------

We endorse the [Contract for The Web](https://contractfortheweb.org/). Most relevant to us are its Company Principles (addendum in \[brackets\]):

> **Principle 4**  
> Make \[essential technology on\] the internet affordable and accessible to everyone

> **Principle 5**  
> Respect and protect people’s privacy and personal data to build online trust

> **Principle 6**  
> Develop technologies that support the best in humanity and challenge the worst

Open Organization
-----------------

We adopt the [Open Organization Definition](https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/open-org-definition) by Red Hat in its entirety:

*   Transparency ([Project Handbook](https://www.notion.so/meilisearch/Project-Handbook-e818a836dd3f4df1bde7c3989c9a0ae4) and [Open Business Plan](/blog/meilisearch-open-business-plan-v0-1/)   Inclusivity ([Contact us - Communication conventions](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/contact.html))
*   Adaptability
*   Collaboration (Contribution Guidelines coming soon)
*   Community ([To open source, and beyond!](/blog/to-open-source-and-beyond/)N Sustainable Development Goals
--------------------------------

As a distributed, internet-based project, it can feel like we are one step removed from the “real world” and our impact on it. But as technology becomes ever more pervasive in our economy, infrastructure and communities, our actions have very real and immediate consequences.

We acknowledge our place in the interconnected world, and in our own small way we are committed to its betterment. None of our activities should have adverse effects on the [UN Sustainable Development Goals](https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/), and we'll do what we can to advance Goals 8, 9 and 10 (addendum in \[brackets\]):

> **Goal 8**  
> Decent Work and Economic Growth; Sustainable economic growth will require societies to create the conditions that allow people to have quality jobs.

> **Goal 9**  
> Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure; Investments in \[technological, open source\] infrastructure are crucial to achieving sustainable development

> **Goal 10**  
> Reduced Inequalities; To reduce inequalities, policies should be universal in principle, paying attention to the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized populations.

Meilisearch Values v0.1: Tech is political

> This is the first of a series of posts that will present our publicly developed [Project Handbook](https://www.notion.so/meilisearch/Project-Handbook-e818a836dd3f4df1bde7c3989c9a0ae4).

Any open source project with the intention to commercialize its value creation should be able to answer this question: **How will you make money?**

Seth Godin's "[The Modern Business Plan](https://seths./blog/2010/05/the-modern-business-plan/)" provides a very useful, prose-focused template that lends itself well to consumption by the general public. This is the v0.1 release of our _Open Business Plan_.

> It’s not clear to me why business plans are the way they are, but  they’re often misused to obfuscate, bore and show an ability to comply with expectations. If I want the real truth about a business and where  it’s going, I’d rather see something else. I’d divide the modern  business plan into five sections:  
>   
> **1\. Truth**  
> **2\. Assertions**  
> **3\. Alternatives**  
> **4\. People**  
> **5\. Money**

Truth
-----

> The truth section describes the world as it is.  Footnote if you want to, but tell me about the market you are entering, the needs that already exist, the competitors in your space, technology standards, the way others have succeeded and failed in the past. The more specific the better. The more ground knowledge the better. The more visceral the stories, the better. The point of this section is to be sure that you’re clear about the way you see the world, and that you and I agree on your assumptions. This section isn’t partisan, it takes no positions, it just states how things are. Truth can take as long as you need to tell it. It can include spreadsheets, market share analysis and anything I need to know about how the world works.

If you want to set up an advanced content search for your website or app _today_, the leading options are [Algolia](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/comparison_to_alternatives.html#meilisearch-vs-algolia) and [Elastic](/blog/why-should-you-use-meilisearch-over-elasticsearch/) both great products, but neither can service a large segment of small to medium-sized businesses that are operating on a tight budget and/or need an easily maintainable setup for on-premises management.

We are not setting out to _kill_, _crush_ or _destroy_ our competitors. We are here to _question_, _challenge_, and _elevate_ the status quo.

Meili SAS is in large part modeling itself after Algolia and Elastic. We also take loads of inspiration from the business strategies of WordPress, Discourse, Sentry, CockroachDB and TimescaleDB. Like them, we are building a [Commercial Open Source Company](https://coss.media/coss-company-value-creation-capture-fundamentals/).

One of our most important competitive advantages is [Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/). It enables us to confidently engineer the highly complex machinery of a search engine without crippling risk of technical debt or dead-ends. With Rust we can fearlessly explore the next frontier of search, safe in the knowledge that our code can always be refactored without bringing the whole foundation down.

Assertion
---------

> The assertions section is your chance to describe how you’re going to change things. We will do X, and then Y will happen. We will build Z with this much money in this much time. We will present Q to the market and the market will respond by taking this action. This is the heart of the modern business plan. The only reason to launch a project is to change something, and I want to know what you’re going to do and what impact it’s going to have.

We are going to spend the next year building _trust_, starting with an extensive **developer community**. We intend to rally this community around our out-in-the-open construction of Meilisearch as the easiest search engine of its kind to set up and modify to your application's needs.

Eventually, customers will get to choose between the instant value of SaaS, or the full control of self-hosted.

SaaS will be our initial focus as a company. It's the more proven model available to us. But we won't build any exclusives into our offering; any search feature we build for our SaaS offering will either be open source or source-available (i.e. freely available for non-commercial use; purchasable license for commercial use).

### Incentives for self-hosting

We intend to structure our business in a way that incentivizes a continued investment in the self-hosting capabilities of Meilisearch. Many open source companies with a SaaS offering end up with inverse incentives to continue improving their user-facing installation story because it competes with their SaaS business. By exploring fair ways to monetize our on-premises offering in commercial contexts we will ensure an ongoing equilibrium in our incentives.

### Self-hosting as a self-negotiator on pricing

A SaaS product that can be alternatively self-hosted with ease is inherently pricing-transparent. When discerning customers can effortlessly compare the experience of our managed SaaS versus our on-premises package, it keeps our pricing honest.

Alternatives
------------

> Of course, this \[assertion\] section will be incorrect. You will make  assertions that won’t pan out. You’ll miss budgets and deadlines and  sales. So the alternatives section tells me what you’ll do if that happens. How much flexibility does your product or team have? If your assertions don’t pan out, is it over?

The likes of Elastic, CockroachDB and GitLab have proven that there is not a singular best option for product delivery. Many customers just want the simplicity of SaaS, but many others **must** have on-premise services. We do not yet know which there will be more appetite for when it comes to Meilisearch, but we are prepared to follow the path of least resistance.

People
------

> The people section rightly highlights the key element… who is on your team, who is going to join your team. ‘Who’ doesn’t mean their resume, who means their attitudes and abilities and track record in shipping.

[Meet the team](https://meilisearch.notion.site/MeiliSearch-Team-b7f24733f4944fa9b09fd518d6fc3eff) (WIP)

Money
-----

> And the last section is all about money. How much do you need, how will you spend it, what does cash flow look like, P&Ls, balance sheets, margins and exit strategies.

We raised a pre-seed round in may, and are backed by LocalGlobe, Seedcamp and Kima. We have already partnered with industry heavyweights like Louis Vuitton and [Platform.sh](http://platform.sh/).

Next step is to create pages similar to these:

*   [https://docs.opencollective.com/help/about/investors](https://docs.opencollective.com/help/about/investors)
*   [https://docs.opencollective.com/help/about/the-open-collective-way/core-contributors-compensation](https://docs.opencollective.com/help/about/the-open-collective-way/core-contributors-compensation)

* * *

We hope you enjoyed this _[very early](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often)_ v0.1.0 release of our Open Business Plan. You'll notice that Seth's article asks for several items of information that we have not yet addressed here. We hope to share more over time, but this requires more dialogue with our investors and other stakeholders.

Please let us know what information you'd most like us to share, and we will prioritize it. Come talk to us in the comments on [/r/opensource](https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/gv7kht/meilisearch_open_business_plan_v01/), [/r/rust](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/gv7ugp/meilisearch_open_business_plan_v01/), or find us on our [default community channels](https://docs.meilisearch.com/learn/what_is_meilisearch/contact.html).

> Interested in what Meilisearch could do for your business? If you [answer this survey](https://meilisearch.typeform.com/to/tsTOTw) you will be the first to know when our initial service offering is operational.

Meilisearch - Open business plan v0.1

Integrate a relevant search bar to your documentation
=====================================================

You might have noticed the search bar in [our documentation](https://docs.meilisearch.com/).

![](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/vuepress_searchbar_demo_b1b886ebc2.gif)

MeiliSearch docs search bar demo

And you are probably wanting the same for your own documentation!

This tutorial will guide you through the steps of building a relevant and powerful search bar for your documentation 🚀

1.  Run a MeiliSearch Instance
2.  Scrape your content
3.  Integrate the Search Bar

Run a MeiliSearch Instance
--------------------------

First of all, you need your documentation content to be scraped and pushed into a MeiliSearch instance.

You can install and run MeiliSearch on your machine using `curl`.

```bash
$ curl -L https://install.meilisearch.com | sh
$ ./meilisearch --master-key=myMasterKey

```

There are [other ways to install MeiliSearch](https://docs.meilisearch.com/reference/features/installation.html#download-and-launch).

MeiliSearch is open-source and can run either on your server or on any cloud provider.

> **Note:** The host URL and the API key you will provide in the next steps correspond to the credentials of this MeiliSearch instance.  
> In the example above, the host URL is `http://localhost:7700` and the API key is `myMasterKey`.

Scrape your Content
-------------------

The Meili team provides and maintains a [scraper tool](https://github.com/meilisearch/docs-scraper) to automatically read the content of your website and store it into an index in MeiliSearch.

### Configuration File

The scraper tool needs a configuration file to know what content you want to scrape, this is done by providing selectors (e.g. the HTML tag).

Here is an example of a basic configuration file:

```json
{
  "index_uid": "docs",
  "start_urls": ["https://www.example.com/doc/"],
  "sitemap_urls": ["https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml"],
  "stop_urls": [],
  "selectors": {
    "lvl0": {
      "selector": ".docs-lvl0",
      "global": true,
      "default_value": "Documentation"
    },
    "lvl1": {
      "selector": ".docs-lvl1",
      "global": true,
      "default_value": "Chapter"
    },
    "lvl2": ".docs-content .docs-lvl2",
    "lvl3": ".docs-content .docs-lvl3",
    "lvl4": ".docs-content .docs-lvl4",
    "lvl5": ".docs-content .docs-lvl5",
    "lvl6": ".docs-content .docs-lvl6",
    "text": ".docs-content p, .docs-content li"
  }
}

```

The `index_uid` field is the index identifier in your MeiliSearch instance in which your website content is stored. The scraping tool will create a new index if it does not exist.

The `docs-content` class is the main container of the textual content in this example. Most of the time, this tag is a `<main>` or an `<article>` HTML element.

`lvlX` selectors should use the standard title tags like `h1`, `h2`, `h3`, etc. You can also use static classes. Set a unique `id` or `name` attribute to these elements.

Every searchable `lvl` elements outside this main documentation container (for instance, in a sidebar) must be `global` selectors. They will be globally picked up and injected to every document built from your page.

If you use VuePress for your documentation, you can check out the [configuration file](https://github.com/meilisearch/documentation/blob/master/.vuepress/docs-scraper/docs-scraper.config.json) we use in production. In our case, the main container is `theme-default-content` and the selector the titles and sub-titles are `h1`, `h2`...

### Run the Scraper

You can run the scraper with Docker. With our local MeiliSearch instance set up at the first step, we run:

```bash
$ docker run -t --rm \
    --network=host \
    -e MEILISEARCH_HOST_URL='http://localhost:7700' \
    -e MEILISEARCH_API_KEY='myMasterKey' \
    -v <absolute-path-to-your-config-file>:/docs-scraper/config.json \
    getmeili/docs-scraper:latest pipenv run ./docs_scraper config.json

```

> **Note:** If you don't want to use Docker, here are [other ways to run the scraper](https://github.com/meilisearch/docs-scraper#installation-and-usage).

`<absolute-path-to-your-config-file>` should be the **absolute** path of your configuration file defined at the previous step.

The API key you must provide should have the permissions to add documents into your MeiliSearch instance. In a production environment, we recommend providing the private key instead of the master key, as it is safer and it has enough permissions to perform such requests.

_More about [MeiliSearch authentication](https://docs.meilisearch.com/reference/features/authentication.html)._

> **Tip:** We recommend running the scraper at each new deployment of your documentation, [as we do for the MeiliSearch's one](https://github.com/meilisearch/documentation/blob/master/.github/workflows/gh-pages-scraping.yml).

Integrate the Search Bar
------------------------

If your documentation is not a VuePress application, you can skip the "For a VuePress Documentation" section and go directly to "For All Kinds of Documentation".

### For a VuePress Documentation

If you use VuePress for your documentation, we provide a [VuePress plugin](https://github.com/meilisearch/vuepress-plugin-meilisearch). This plugin is used in production in the MeiliSearch documentation.

![VuePress plugin example](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/vuepress_plugin_example_ba1e4b4668.png)

VuePress plugin example

In your VuePress project:

```bash
$ yarn add vuepress-plugin-meilisearch
# or
$ npm install vuepress-plugin-meilisearch

```

In your `config.js` file:

```js
module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    [
      "vuepress-plugin-meilisearch",
      {
        "hostUrl": "<your-meilisearch-host-url>",
        "apiKey": "<your-meilisearch-api-key>",
        "indexUid": "docs"
      }
    ],
  ],
}

```

The `hostUrl` and the `apiKey` fields are the credentials of the MeiliSearch instance. Following on from this tutorial, they are respectively `http://localhost:7700` and `myMasterKey`.

`indexUid` is the index identifier in your MeiliSearch instance in which your website content is stored. It has been defined in the config file.

These three fields are mandatory, but more [optional fields are available](https://github.com/meilisearch/vuepress-plugin-meilisearch#customization) to customize your search bar.

> **Warning:** Since the configuration file is public, we strongly recommend providing the MeiliSearch public key in a production environment, which is enough to perform search requests.  
>   
> Read more about [MeiliSearch authentication](https://docs.meilisearch.com/reference/features/authentication.html#authentication).

### For All Kinds of Documentation

If you don't use VuePress for your documentation, we provide a [front-end SDK](https://github.com/meilisearch/docs-searchbar.js) to integrate a powerful and relevant search bar to any documentation website.

![docs-searchbar.js example](https://unable-actionable-car.media.strapiapp.com/docs_searchbar_example_83b1557e12.png)

docs-searchbar.js example

```html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/docs-searchbar.js@{version}/dist/cdn/docs-searchbar.min.css" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <input type="search" id="search-bar-input">
    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/docs-searchbar.js@{version}/dist/cdn/docs-searchbar.min.js"></script>
    <script>
      docsSearchBar({
        hostUrl: '<your-meilisearch-host-url>',
        apiKey: '<your-meilisearch-api-key>',
        indexUid: 'docs',
        inputSelector: '#search-bar-input',
        debug: true // Set debug to true if you want to inspect the dropdown
      });
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

```

The `hostUrl` and the `apiKey` fields are the credentials of the MeiliSearch instance. Following on from this tutorial, they are respectively `http://localhost:7700` and `myMasterKey`.

`indexUid` is the index identifier in your MeiliSearch instance in which your website content is stored. It has been defined in the config file.  
`inputSelector` is the `id` attribute of the HTML search input tag.

> **Warning:** We strongly recommend providing the MeiliSearch public key in a production environment, which is enough to perform search requests.  
> Read more about [MeiliSearch authentication](https://docs.meilisearch.com/reference/features/authentication.html).

The default behavior of this library fits perfectly for a documentation search bar, but you might need [some customizations](https://github.com/meilisearch/docs-searchbar.js#customization).

> **Note:** For more concrete examples, you can check out this [basic HTML file](https://github.com/meilisearch/docs-searchbar.js/blob/master/scripts/playground.html) or [this more advanced Vue file](https://github.com/meilisearch/vuepress-plugin-meilisearch/blob/master/MeiliSearchBox.vue).

What's next?
------------

At this point you should have a working search engine on your website, congrats! 🎉

You can check [this tutorial](https://docs.meilisearch.com/running-production/) if you now want to run MeiliSearch in production!

Meilisearch latest news and company updates