Minimal Text Search

This is a dependency free text substring search system that is meant to be small, fast enough and limited. I have tested this on a modern desktop and it takes about 16 ms to search for a substring in 5000 records. If you try to use this for more than a few thousand records it is going to be more than a few milliseconds to search, but as this is only meant for client side JS I think you may have other problems

install

npm install --save minimal-text-search

Similarities to Lunr.js

This is not meant to be a drop in replacement for Lunr.js, the only thing I have implement is a very simple substring search, but I have tried to emulate their interfaces where possible.

The only search capability that is currently implemented is exact substring match.

How to Index and Search:

 
import MinimalTextSearch from 'minimal-text-search';
 
// same field config API as lunr
const search = new MinimalTextSearch(function() {
  this.field('name');
  this.field('address');
  this.ref('id');
});
 
search.add({
  name: 'Elon Musk',
  address: 'Los Angeles, CA',
  dateOfBirth: 'N/A',
  id: 45400
});
 
search.add({
  name: 'Benjamin Franklin',
  address: 'Philadelphia, PA',
  dateOfBirth: 'Unknown',
  id: 45500
});
 
search.add({
  name: 'Johannes Brahms',
  address: 'Vienna, Austria',
  dateOfBirth: '7 May 1833',
  id: 45600
});
 
const results1 = search.exactMatch('frank');  // 1 result
const results2 = search.exactMatch('frank', { caseSensitive: true });  // 0 results
const res3 = search.exactMatch('min Fra'); // 1 result
 

What does Result Structure look like?

 
// assume that the same dataset above has been used
 
const res4 = search.exactMatch('es'); // 2 results (Johannes and Angeles will match)
 
console.log(res4);

The log statment yields:

 
// You will get an array of hits. If no results you get empty array.
[
  {
    document:                          // A link to the original document (not a copy)
     {
       name: 'Elon Musk',
       address: 'Los Angeles, CA',
       dateOfBirth: 'N/A',
       id: 45400
     },
    hits: 1,                           // Total hits in this document
    matches: [ 19 ] },                 // Hit position of where it found a match
  {
    document:
     {
       name: 'Johannes Brahms',
       address: 'Vienna, Austria',
       dateOfBirth: '7 May 1833',
       id: 45600
     },
    hits: 1,
    matches: [ 6 ]
  }
]