search

boost
1.05

Setting up site search

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.

Configuration

Built-in search plugin

: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.

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 multi-character separators. 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]

Chinese language support

:octicons-heart-fill-24:{ .mdx-heart } Sponsors only{ .mdx-insiders } · :octicons-tag-24: insiders-4.14.0 · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental

Insiders adds search support for the Chinese language (see our [blog article] chinese search from May 2022) by integrating with the text segmentation library jieba, which can be installed with pip.

pip install jieba

If jieba is installed, the built-in search plugin automatically detects Chinese characters and runs them through the segmenter. The following configuration options are available:

jieba_dict{ #+search.jieba_dict }

: :octicons-tag-24: insiders-4.17.2 · :octicons-milestone-24: Default: none – This option allows for specifying a custom dictionary to be used by jieba for segmenting text, replacing the default dictionary:

``` yaml
plugins:
  - search:
      jieba_dict: dict.txt # (1)!
```

1.  The following alternative dictionaries are provided by [jieba]:

    - [dict.txt.small] – 占用内存较小的词典文件
    - [dict.txt.big] – 支持繁体分词更好的词典文件

jieba_dict_user{ #+search.jieba_dict_user }

: :octicons-tag-24: insiders-4.17.2 · :octicons-milestone-24: Default: none – This option allows for specifying an additional user dictionary to be used by jieba for segmenting text, augmenting the default dictionary:

``` yaml
plugins:
  - search:
      jieba_dict_user: user_dict.txt
```

User dictionaries can be used for tuning the segmenter to preserve
technical terms.

Rich search previews

: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]

Tokenizer lookahead

: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 `&lt;` and `&gt;`. 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]

Search suggestions

: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.

Search highlighting

: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.

Search sharing

: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.

Usage

Search boosting

:octicons-tag-24: 8.3.0 · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental

Pages can be boosted in search with the front matter search.boost property, 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.

Search exclusion

:octicons-heart-fill-24:{ .mdx-heart } Sponsors only{ .mdx-insiders } · :octicons-tag-24: insiders-3.1.0 · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental

Pages can be excluded from search with the front matter search.exclude property, removing them from the index. Add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:

---
search:
  exclude: true
---

# Document title
...

Excluding sections

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"
    }
  ]
}
```

Excluding blocks

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"
    }
  ]
}
```

Customization

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.

Query transformation

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 an AND query (as opposed to the default OR 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 an AND 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.

Custom search

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:

:octicons-file-code-24: SearchMessage
:octicons-file-code-24: SearchIndex and SearchResult

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

Provide feedback

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly

setting-up-site-search.md

setting-up-site-search.md

Setting up site search

Configuration

Built-in search plugin

Chinese language support

Rich search previews

Tokenizer lookahead

Search suggestions

Search highlighting

Search sharing

Usage

Search boosting

Search exclusion

Excluding sections

Excluding blocks

Customization

Query transformation

Custom search

Files

setting-up-site-search.md

Latest commit

History

setting-up-site-search.md

File metadata and controls

Setting up site search

Configuration

Built-in search plugin

Chinese language support

Rich search previews

Tokenizer lookahead

Search suggestions

Search highlighting

Search sharing

Usage

Search boosting

Search exclusion

Excluding sections

Excluding blocks

Customization

Query transformation

Custom search