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Pros and cons for each option are explored in more detail below. This is just an overview of some of the issues. Would you like search to work offline? Maybe just for part of your site’s functionality, such as a store locator or customer account history? Offline search can be enabled by caching index data on the client (demo here).How much data do you need to search? If you can cache all of your data locally on the client (say less than 20MB) you could consider client-side search.What are you searching, in what context? Log analysis, for example, is very different from consumer product search or a professional search service for a large collection of unstructured data such as an historical archive.Do you need to search content, data, metadata - or all three? Search engines can index content and metadata from binary files such as PDF and Word documents, or access data and content from databases, or extract metadata such as EXIF from images.How often do you update your data? If updates are continual and search results absolutely must be kept up to date, you’ll probably need to use a server-side option.Whatever your target platforms, there are several key considerations when choosing a solution: Client-side JavaScript libraries that synchronises data with a backend database: PouchDB for example.Īll the search engines, databases and managed services discussed in this article have integrations across multiple platforms, frameworks and languages - not just for the web.Client-side JavaScript search libraries such as Elasticlunr.Application platforms and database services with add-on search functionality, such as Firebase and Cloudant.Using a database with built-in search such as MySQL or MongoDB.
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Commercial search services such as Algolia and AWS Cloudsearch.Via a back-end search engine such as Elasticsearch or Solr.
#OFFLINE PAGES PRO REVIEW JAVASCRIPT HOW TO#
This article explains server and client-side alternatives, and shows how to implement search that works offline. Many types of website need efficient, accurate search. How to add full text search to your website
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