template | search | ||
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overrides/main.html |
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Material for MkDocs provides an excellent client-side search implementation, omitting the need for the integration of third-party services, which might not be compliant with privacy regulations. Moreover, search even works offline, allowing users to download your documentation.
:octicons-tag-24: 0.1.0 · :octicons-cpu-24: Plugin
The built-in search plugin integrates seamlessly with Material for MkDocs,
adding multilingual client-side search with lunr and lunr-languages. It's
enabled by default, but must be re-added to mkdocs.yml
when other plugins
are used:
plugins:
- search
The following configuration options are supported:
lang
{ #search-lang }
: :octicons-milestone-24: Default: automatically set – This option allows to include the language-specific stemmers provided by lunr-languages. Note that Material for MkDocs will set this automatically based on the site language, but it may be overridden, e.g. to support multiple languages:
=== "A single language"
``` yaml
plugins:
- search:
lang: ru
```
=== "Multiple languages"
``` yaml
plugins:
- search:
lang: # (1)!
- en
- ru
```
1. Be aware that including support for other languages increases the
general JavaScript payload by around 20kb (before `gzip`) and by
another 15-30kb per language.
The following languages are supported:
<div class="mdx-columns" markdown>
- `ar` – Arabic
- `da` – Danish
- `de` – German
- `du` – Dutch
- `en` – English
- `es` – Spanish
- `fi` – Finnish
- `fr` – French
- `hu` – Hungarian
- `it` – Italian
- `ja` – Japanese
- `no` – Norwegian
- `pt` – Portuguese
- `ro` – Romanian
- `ru` – Russian
- `sv` – Swedish
- `th` – Thai
- `tr` – Turkish
- `vi` – Vietnamese
</div>
Material for MkDocs goes to great lengths to support languages that are not
part of this list by automatically falling back to the stemmer yielding the
best result.
!!! tip "Chinese search support – 中文搜索支持"
Material for MkDocs recently added __experimental language support for
Chinese__ as part of [Insiders]. [Read the blog article][chinese search]
to learn how to set up search for Chinese in a matter of minutes.
separator
{ #search-separator }
: :octicons-milestone-24: Default: automatically set – The separator for
indexing and query tokenization can be customized, making it possible to
index parts of words separated by other characters than whitespace and -
,
e.g. by including .
:
``` yaml
plugins:
- search:
separator: '[\\s\\-\\.]' # (1)!
```
1. Tokenization itself is carried out by [lunr's default tokenizer], which
doesn't allow for lookahead or separators spanning multiple characters.
For more finegrained control over the tokenization process, see the
section on [tokenizer lookahead].
prebuild_index
{ #search-prebuild-index }
: :octicons-tag-24: 5.0.0 · :octicons-archive-24:
Deprecated · :octicons-trash-24: 8.0.0 · :octicons-milestone-24: Default:
false
– MkDocs can generate a prebuilt index of all pages during
build time, which provides performance improvements at the cost of more
bandwidth, as it reduces the build time of the search index:
``` yaml
plugins:
- search:
prebuild_index: true
```
Note that this configuration option was removed, as the [new search
plugin] generates up to [50% smaller] search indexes, doubling search
performance.
[:octicons-arrow-right-24: Read more on the new search plugin]
[new search plugin]
The other configuration options of this plugin are not officially supported by Material for MkDocs, which is why they may yield unexpected results. Use them at your own risk.
:octicons-heart-fill-24:{ .mdx-heart } Sponsors only{ .mdx-insiders } · :octicons-tag-24: insiders-3.0.0 · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
Insiders ships rich search previews as part of the new search plugin, which will render code blocks directly in the search result, and highlight all occurrences inside those blocks:
=== "Insiders"
![search preview now]
=== "Material for MkDocs"
![search preview before]
:octicons-heart-fill-24:{ .mdx-heart } Sponsors only{ .mdx-insiders } · :octicons-tag-24: insiders-3.0.0 · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
Insiders allows for more complex configurations of the separator
setting as part of the new search plugin, yielding more influence on the way
documents are tokenized:
plugins:
- search:
separator: "[\\s\\-,:!=\\[\\]()\"/]+|\\.(?!\\d)|&[lg]t;|(?!\\b)(?=[A-Z][a-z])"
The following section explains what can be achieved with tokenizer lookahead:
=== "Case changes"
```
(?!\b)(?=[A-Z][a-z])
```
`PascalCase` and `camelCase` are used as naming conventions in many
programming languages. By adding this match group to the [`separator`]
[separator], [words are split at case changes], tokenizing the word
`PascalCase` into `Pascal` and `Case`, so both terms can be searched
individually.
[:octicons-arrow-right-24: Read more on tokenizing case changes]
[tokenize case changes]
=== "Version numbers"
```
\.(?!\d)
```
When `.` is added to the [`separator`][separator], version numbers would be
split into parts, rendering them undiscoverable via search. By adding
this match group, a small lookahead is introduced, so version numbers will
remain as they are, and can be found through search.
[:octicons-arrow-right-24: Read more on tokenizing version numbers]
[tokenize version numbers]
=== "HTML/XML tags"
```
&[lg]t;
```
If your documentation includes HTML/XML code examples, you may want to allow
users to find specific tag names. Unfortunately, the `<` and `>` control
characters are encoded in code blocks as `<` and `>`. Adding this
expression to the separator allows for just that.
[:octicons-arrow-right-24: Read more on tokenizing HTML/XML tags]
[tokenize html-xml tags]
:octicons-tag-24: 7.2.0 · :octicons-unlock-24: Feature flag · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
When search suggestions are enabled, the search will display the likeliest
completion for the last word which can be accepted with the ++arrow-right++ key.
Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml
:
theme:
features:
- search.suggest
Searching for :octicons-search-24: search su yields ^^search suggestions^^ as a suggestion.
:octicons-tag-24: 7.2.0 · :octicons-unlock-24: Feature flag · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
When search highlighting is enabled and a user clicks on a search result,
Material for MkDocs will highlight all occurrences after following the link.
Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml
:
theme:
features:
- search.highlight
Searching for :octicons-search-24: code blocks highlights all occurrences of both terms.
:octicons-tag-24: 7.2.0 · :octicons-unlock-24: Feature flag · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
When search sharing is activated, a :material-share-variant: share button is
rendered next to the reset button, which allows to deep link to the current
search query and result. Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml
:
theme:
features:
- search.share
When a user clicks the share button, the URL is automatically copied to the clipboard.
:octicons-heart-fill-24:{ .mdx-heart } Sponsors only{ .mdx-insiders } · :octicons-tag-24: insiders-2.8.0
When Metadata is enabled, pages can be boosted in search with custom front matter, which will make them rank higher. Add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:
---
search:
boost: 2 # (1)!
---
# Document title
...
- :woman_in_lotus_position: When boosting pages, be gentle and start with low values.
:octicons-heart-fill-24:{ .mdx-heart } Sponsors only{ .mdx-insiders } · :octicons-tag-24: insiders-3.1.0 · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
When Metadata is enabled, pages can be excluded from search with custom front matter, removing them from the index. Add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:
---
search:
exclude: true
---
# Document title
...
When Attribute Lists is enabled, specific sections of pages can be excluded
from search by adding the { data-search-exclude }
pragma after a Markdown
heading:
=== ":octicons-file-code-16: docs/page.md"
``` markdown
# Document title
## Section 1
The content of this section is included
## Section 2 { data-search-exclude }
The content of this section is excluded
```
=== ":octicons-codescan-16: search_index.json"
``` json
{
...
"docs": [
{
"location":"page/",
"text":"",
"title":"Document title"
},
{
"location":"page/#section-1",
"text":"<p>The content of this section is included</p>",
"title":"Section 1"
}
]
}
```
When Attribute Lists is enabled, specific sections of pages can be excluded
from search by adding the { data-search-exclude }
pragma after a Markdown
inline- or block-level element:
=== ":octicons-file-code-16: docs/page.md"
``` markdown
# Document title
The content of this block is included
The content of this block is excluded
{ data-search-exclude }
```
=== ":octicons-codescan-16: search_index.json"
``` json
{
...
"docs": [
{
"location":"page/",
"text":"<p>The content of this block is included</p>",
"title":"Document title"
}
]
}
```
The search implementation of Material for MkDocs is probably its most sophisticated feature, as it tries to balance a great typeahead experience, good performance, accessibility, and a result list that is easy to scan. This is where Material for MkDocs deviates from other themes.
The following section explains how search can be customized to tailor it to your needs.
When a user enters a query into the search box, the query is pre-processed before it is submitted to the search index. Material for MkDocs will apply the following transformations, which can be customized by extending the theme:
export function defaultTransform(query: string): string {
return query
.split(/"([^"]+)"/g) /* (1)! */
.map((terms, index) => index & 1
? terms.replace(/^\b|^(?![^\x00-\x7F]|$)|\s+/g, " +")
: terms
)
.join("")
.replace(/"|(?:^|\s+)[*+\-:^~]+(?=\s+|$)/g, "") /* (2)! */
.trim() /* (3)! */
}
-
Search for terms in quotation marks and prepend a
+
modifier to denote that the resulting document must contain all terms, converting the query to anAND
query (as opposed to the defaultOR
behavior). While users may expect terms enclosed in quotation marks to map to span queries, i.e. for which order is important,lunr
doesn't support them, so the best we can do is to convert the terms to anAND
query. -
Replace control characters which are not located at the beginning of the query or preceded by white space, or are not followed by a non-whitespace character or are at the end of the query string. Furthermore, filter unmatched quotation marks.
-
Trim excess whitespace from left and right.
If you want to switch to the default behavior of the mkdocs
and readthedocs
themes, both of which don't transform the query prior to submission, or
customize the transform
function, you can do this by overriding the
config
block:
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block config %}
{{ super() }}
<script>
var __search = {
transform: function(query) {
return query
}
}
</script>
{% endblock %}
The transform
function will receive the query string as entered by the user
and must return the processed query string to be submitted to the search index.
Material for MkDocs implements search as part of a web worker. If you
want to switch the web worker with your own implementation, e.g. to submit
search to an external service, you can add a custom JavaScript file to the
docs
directory and override the config
block:
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block config %}
{{ super() }}
<script>
var __search = {
worker: "<url>"
}
</script>
{% endblock %}
Communication with the search worker is implemented using a designated message
format using discriminated unions, i.e. through the type
property of the
message. See the following interface definitions to learn about the message
formats:
The sequence and direction of messages is rather intuitive:
- :octicons-arrow-right-24:
SearchSetupMessage
- :octicons-arrow-left-24:
SearchReadyMessage
- :octicons-arrow-right-24:
SearchQueryMessage
- :octicons-arrow-left-24:
SearchResultMessage