modelsearch 1.0a1

Search Django models with Elasticsearch

Django ModelSearch

Django ModelSearch allows you index and search Django models using Elasticsearch.

This was built in to Wagtail CMS since 2014 and this package now allows it to be used in a standalone way on all other Django projects!

Installation

Install with PIP, then add to INSTALLED_APPS in your Django settings:

pip install django-modelsearch

# settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    "modelsearch
    ...
]

Configure a backend in Django settings. For example, to configure Elasticsearch:

# settings.py

MODELSEARCH_BACKENDS = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'wagtail.search.backends.elasticsearch8',
        'URLS': ['https://localhost:9200'],
        'INDEX': 'wagtail',
        'TIMEOUT': 5,
        'OPTIONS': {},
        'INDEX_SETTINGS': {},
    }
}

Indexing content

To index a model, add modelsearch.index.Indexed to the model class and define some search_fields:

from modelsearch import index

class Book(index.Indexed, models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=255)
    genre = models.CharField(max_length=255, choices=GENRE_CHOICES)
    author = models.ForeignKey(Author, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    published_date = models.DateTimeField()

    search_fields = [
        index.SearchField('title', boost=10),
        index.AutocompleteField('title', boost=10),
        index.SearchField('get_genre_display'),

        index.FilterField('genre'),
        index.FilterField('author'),
        index.FilterField('published_date'),
    ]

Then run the rebuild_index management command to build the search index.

Searching content

Searching is done using a new .search() method that is added to the querysets of indexed models.

You can use Django's .filter(), .exclude(), and .order_by() with the search method and these will be added as filters in the Elasticsearch query. Remember to index any fields you want to filter/order on with index.FilterField first!

For example:

>>> Book.objects.filter(author=roald_dahl).search("chocolate factory")
[<Book: Charlie and the chocolate factory>]