modelsearch 1.0rc3

A library for indexing Django models with Elasicsearch, OpenSearch or database and searching them with the Django ORM.

Django ModelSearch

Django ModelSearch allows you to index Django models and search them using the ORM!

It supports PostgreSQL FTS, SQLite FTS5, Elasticsearch (7.x, 8.x, and 9.x), and OpenSearch (1.x, 2.x, and 3.x).

Features:

• Index models in Elasticsearch and OpenSearch and query with the Django ORM
• Reuse existing QuerySets for search, works with Django paginators and django-filter
• Also supports PostgreSQL FTS and SQLite FTS5
• Autocomplete
• Faceting
• Per-field boosting
• Fuzzy Search
• Phrase search
• Structured queries

This has been built into Wagtail CMS since 2014 and extracted into a separate package in March 2025.

Installation

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

pip install modelsearch

# settings.py

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

By default, Django ModelSearch will index into the database configured in DATABASES["default"] and use PostgreSQL FTS or SQLite FTS, if available.

You can change the indexing configuration, or add additional backends with the MODALSEARCH_BACKENDS setting. For example, to configure Elasticsearch:

# settings.py

MODELSEARCH_BACKENDS = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'modelsearch.backends.elasticsearch8',
        'URLS': ['https://localhost:9200'],
        'INDEX_PREFIX': 'modelsearch_',
        'TIMEOUT': 5,
        'OPTIONS': {},
        'INDEX_SETTINGS': {},
    }
}

Indexing

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

from modelsearch import index
from modelsearch.queryset import SearchableQuerySetMixin

class BookQuerySet(models.QuerySet, SearchableQuerySetMixin):
    pass

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()

    objects = BookQuerySet.as_manager()

    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

You can search models using the .search() QuerySet method (added by SearchableQuerySetMixin). For example:

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

.search() can be used in conjunction with most other QuerySet Methods like .filter(), .exclude() or .order_by(). When using Elasticsearch, these are automatically converted to the same Elasticsearch Query, so any fields used here must be indexed with index.FilterField so they are added to the Elasticsearch index.

Autocomplete

To autocomplete a partial search query, use the .autocomplete() method. For example:

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

Note that fields used in autocomplete need to also be indexed as an AutocompleteField as autocompletable fields need to be indexed differently.