Search

This is the official documentation of the @forestadmin/agent Node.js agent.

In Forest Admin, pages that show lists of records have a free-text search bar on top of them.

A search bar on the main Table View

Search modes

2 search modes are supported: "normal" and "extended".

• All searches start by being a "normal" search.

• If the records users are looking for are not found, it is possible to trigger an "extended" search from the footer.

Extended search call to action

Default behavior

Natively, the search behavior is to seek value occurrences within columns of the Collection (in normal mode), and columns of the Collections of direct relations (in extended mode).

By default, Forest Admin will search only in specific columns, depending on their type:

Column Type	Default search behavior
Enum	Column is equal to the search string (case-insensitive).
Number	Column is equal to the search string (if the search string is numeric).
String	Column contains the search string (case-insensitive).
Uuid	Column is equal to the search string.
Other types	Column is ignored by the default search handler.

Customization

If you want to make a column searchable, you must define the right operator to allow the search to be performed. Please refer to the Operators to support table to know which operator to define.

Alternatively, you may want to change how the search behaves in your admin panel.

For instance:

• search only on the columns that are relevant to your use case.

• use full-text indexes (i.e. Postgres tsquery and tsvector, Algolia, Elastic search, ...)

To customize the search behavior, you must define a handler that returns a ConditionTree.

Extending the default search

The context received by the function replaceSearch can have access to the default search behavior and extend it:

agent.customizeCollection('people', collection => {
  collection.replaceSearch((searchString, extendedMode, context) => {
    // This function in the context gives access to the default search behavior
    // including the advanced search
    return context.generateSearchFilter(searchString, {
      // Include fields from the first level of relations when true
      extended: extendedMode,
      // Remove these fields from the default search fields
      excludeFields: ['gender'],
      // Add these fields to the default search field
      includeFields: ['address:street'],
      // Replace the list of default searched field by these fields
      // onlyFields: [],
    });
  });
});

The condition tree returned by generateSearchFilter can be combined with other custom conditions:

agent.customizeCollection('people', collection => {
  collection.replaceSearch((searchString, extendedMode, context) => {
    const defaultCondition = context.generateSearchFilter(searchString, {
      extended: extendedMode,
    });

    return {
      aggregator: 'Or',
      conditions: [
        defaultCondition,
        { field: 'address:street', operator: 'IContains', value: searchString },
      ],
    };
  });
});

Making the search case-sensitive by default

In this example, we use the searchExtended condition to toggle between case-sensitive and insensitive searches.

agent.customizeCollection('people', collection => {
  collection.replaceSearch((searchString, extendedMode) => {
    const operator = extendedMode ? 'Contains' : 'IContains';

    return {
      aggregator: 'Or',
      conditions: [
        { field: 'firstName', operator, value: searchString },
        { field: 'lastName', operator, value: searchString },
      ],
    };
  });
});

Changing searched columns

const productReferenceRegexp = /^[a-f]{16}$/i;
const barCodeRegexp = /^[0-9]{10}$/i;

agent.customizeCollection('products', collection => {
  collection.replaceSearch(async (searchString, extendedMode, context) => {
    // User is searching using a product reference.
    if (productReferenceRegexp.test(searchString))
      return context.generateSearchFilter(searchString, {
        onlyFields: ['reference'],
      });

    // User is search a barcode
    if (barCode.test(searchString))
      return context.generateSearchFilter(searchString, {
        onlyFields: ['barCode'],
      });

    // User is searching something else, let's search in the product name only
    if (!extendedMode)
      return context.generateSearchFilter(searchString, { onlyFields: ['name'] });

    // In "extended" mode, we search on name, description and brand name
    return context.generateSearchFilter(searchString, {
      onlyFields: ['name', 'description', 'brand:name'],
    });
  });
});

Calling an external API

If your data is indexed using a SaaS, an external store, or a full-text index, you can call it in the search handler.

const algoliasearch = require('algoliasearch');
const client = algoliasearch('APPLICATION_ID', 'WRITE_API_KEY');
const index = client.initIndex('indexName');

agent.customizeCollection('products', collection =>
  collection.replaceSearch(async (searchString, extendedMode, context) => {
    const { hits } = index.search(searchString, {
      attributesToRetrieve: ['id'],
      hitsPerPage: 50,
    });

    return { field: 'id', operator: 'In', value: hits.map(h => h.id) };
  });
);

Disable the search

By default, the search bar is displayed when at least one field supports the operator used for search based on its type (see this table).

You can remove the search bar by disabling the search on a collection:

agent.customizeCollection('Products', collection => {
  collection.disableSearch();
});