lite-search

Search

An instant search UI component for the Web aimed to be light, agnostic and effective.

Features

• instant search
• highlight search term matches
• show match context
• easy to install
• runs locally on the browser
• not overly complicated
• does not require any kind of framework or tooling
• Fuse.js is the sole dependency
• works when offline (DocSearch doesn't)
• works behind authentication (DocSearch doesn't)
• do not track users (DocSearch doesn't?)
• acessibility (please fill a report if it doesn't work properly with screen readers)

Caveats

• It does not support context-wise search at headings level as DocSearch does.
• Fuse.js is kind of dead.

Demo

Check the demo. It uses Hugo.

Usage

Data

It expects JSON data at /index.json but this can be changed with dataPath option.

Expected keys are title, description, url, image (optional) and id (optional).

{
  "id": "3db3e4a737a176646e0c3b8d5f25d392",
  "url": "/lorem-ipsum/",
  "title": "Lorem Ipsum"
}
, 
{
  "id": "e62701a89b303de6e24cb577ee9d5614",
  "url": "/dolor-sit-amet/",
  "title": "Dolor Sit Amet"
}

Use

import Search from 'lite-search'

Search({
  // comment keys that aren't going to be used.
  keys: [
    { name: "title", weight: 7 },
    { name: "description", weight: 3 },
    { name: "content", weight: 1 }
  ],

  // optionally provide an alias when key names on JSON differ from what the script expects.
  aliases: [
    // { input: "title", output: "description" },
    // { input: "description", output: "title" }
  ],

  dataPath: "/index.json",
  // dataPath: "/" + basePath + lang + "/index.json",  // for multilingual 
  formSelector: "#search",
  minInputLength: 0,
  matchStrategy: "fuzzy",
  maxResults: 10,
  maxContextLength: 250,
  includeMatches: false,  // NOTE: use 'exact' for matchStrategy
  showSectionOnTitle: true,
  modalFullscreen: false
})

Use NPM with a bundler like ESBuild. Or, as in the case of Hugo, use it's JS Building feature to build a script. If you can't or don't want to use NPM you can use the pre-bundled (lite-search + fuse.js) distributables at dist/.

<script src="./lite-search/dist/search.js" async></script>

When the call and the script are enclosed together (bundled) they can be loaded asynchronously, otherwise you will have to defer the call until the script is loaded.

<script src="./lite-search/dist/search.js" async></script>
<script defer>
  Search({})
  ....
</script>

HTML

<form id="search" role="search" aria-haspopup="listbox" aria-labelledby="search-label" hidden="true">
  <label id="search-label" class="fas fa-search"></label>

  <input
    id="search-input"
    type="search"
    list="search-results"
    placeholder="Search..." 
    aria-label="Search"
    autocomplete="off"
    spellcheck="false"
    hidden="true"
  >
  </input>

  <ul id="search-modal" role="listbox" hidden="true">
  </ul>
</form>