Algolia

From this guide, you’ll learn how to index Prepr content with the Algolia search engine for an optimized and performant search experience in your web app.

Introduction

If you value a good customer experience, you might think about how web visitors search across your app. Can they easily find what they are looking for? Are they receiving the most up-to-date content? Web users have a short attention span, so it's crucial to provide them with relevant search results to maintain their loyalty.

Prepr supports integration with Algolia (opens in a new tab), an AI-powered search service with a high-performance API. It enables your Prepr content items to be indexed using the Algolia algorithm, maximizing the search speed and content discovery in your web app.

To make it easier to use, here are the step-by-step instructions.

Step 1: Get the API credentials from your Algolia app

To connect Prepr to Algolia, you need an Application ID (opens in a new tab) and a valid API key (opens in a new tab) with the following ACL permissions:

• settings: Used to verify if the index exists before performing operations.
• addObject: Used to add new records to your Algolia index.
• deleteObject: Used to delete outdated or incorrect records in the Algolia index.
• search: Used to find related records that also need to be updated in the Algolia index.

For more details, check out Rights and restrictions (opens in a new tab) in Algolia docs. Algolia uses these credentials to identify your Prepr application and control access to Algolia’s API.

To get the credentials, navigate to the API Keys (opens in a new tab) section in your Algolia app settings.

Step 2: Connect Prepr to Algolia

Now that you have the required credentials, you can set up the Algolia integration in Prepr as follows:

1. Go to Settings → Integrations and choose Algolia. Click the Activate button.

2. In the New Algolia app page, enter your Algolia credentials from the previous step.
3. Select the models you want to sync to Algolia and map them to the required Algolia index names. You can specify the existing index names you already have in your Algolia, or you can provide new index names from within Prepr. In the latter case, the indices with the relevant names will be created automatically once the data is synced to Algolia. Read more about the Algolia indices (opens in a new tab).
4. Click Save to confirm the settings.

That's it. You’ve connected Prepr to Algolia. From now on, Prepr will automatically keep syncing your content items to Algolia for indexing.

When a new content item is published, one or more records will be created in Algolia. Any changes to the published content item result in updating the corresponding Algolia records. Once the content item is unpublished, the Algolia records will be removed.

So you can be sure your data is always-in-sync, and that the most up-to-date content is available to your web app visitors.

Indexed field types

Before sending your content item data to Algolia, Prepr automatically transforms it into a JSON format (opens in a new tab) that Algolia recognizes. Once data is prepared and synced, the corresponding records are created and stored in an Algolia index you specified in Step 2.

The following table shows indexed Prepr field types and the corresponding Algolia records (opens in a new tab) types.

Step 3: Configure your Algolia setup

Add the following attributes to your Algolia configuration to enhance your search ranking performance:

_body as a Searchable Attribute

Include _body as a searchable attribute (opens in a new tab) in Algolia, which holds content potentially relevant to your customers' searches.

1. Log in to your Algolia account, and navigate to Search in the sidebar.
2. Select your index at the top.
3. Click the Configuration tab.
4. Click the Searchable Attributes side menu.
5. Click the Add a Searchable Attribute button, type _body and press enter.
6. Drag _body to your desired position, to change the priority order (opens in a new tab).
7. Click the Review and Save Settings button to save your changes.

_level as a custom ranking attribute

Configure _level as an ascending custom ranking attribute (opens in a new tab) in Algolia. _level represents the hierarchical level of content, with higher values indicating a more nested position. This setup helps ensure that search results prioritize content hierarchy effectively.

1. Log in to your Algolia account, and navigate to Search in the sidebar.
2. Select your index at the top.
3. Click the Configuration tab.
4. Click the Ranking and Sorting side menu.
5. Click the Add Custom Ranking Attribute button, type _level and press enter.
6. Important: Change the order setting of _level from Descending to Ascending.
7. Drag _level to your desired position, to change the priority order (opens in a new tab). For example, above "Ranking Criteria (typo, geo, words, filters, proximity, attribute, exact, custom)".
8. Click the Review and Save Settings button to save your changes.

distinctID for grouping records

Configure distinctID for grouping records (opens in a new tab) in Algolia. distinctID, representing the locale and ID of the Content Item, prevents multiple results for the same page.

1. Log in to your Algolia account, and navigate to Search in the sidebar.
2. Select your index at the top.
3. Click the Configuration tab.
4. Scroll down, click the Deduplication and Grouping side menu.
5. Important: Change the setting of Distinct to true or 1.
6. Type distinctID to Attribute for Distinct and press enter.
7. Click the Review and Save Settings button to save your changes.

Step 4: Connect your front end to Algolia

Now that your Prepr data is indexed with Algolia, you’re ready to implement Algolia on your web app.

Follow the Algolia instructions to set up the API client (opens in a new tab) for your programming language. After setting up the API client, you can initialize and connect it to Algolia.

Also, check out how to build a search UI with Algolia (opens in a new tab).

How to sync existing content and schema updates to Algolia

The steps above allow you to index all new content created after enabling the Algolia integration. If you need to index any content you already have, or after a schema update, you need to run the sync action manually.

To sync content items to Algolia manually, you must call the given Prepr endpoint and specify a model ID, which you can find under Schema → Model → → Copy Model ID.

Content items will be synced in batches, the overall time depends on the number of content items you have.

The following API request will sync content items to Algolia:

GET: https://api.eu1.prepr.io/publications/algolia/sync

{
   "model": {
       "id": "YOUR_MODEL_ID"
   }
}