Meilisearch

MeiliSearch is a powerful, fast, open-source, easy to use and deploy search engine. Both searching and indexing are highly customizable. Features such as typo-tolerance, filters, and synonyms are provided out-of-the-box.

Here, the installation wil use GNU/Linux but it can be deploy on macOS too. For Windows, Windows Subsytem for Linux or Docker are some solutions.

• meilisearch.com
• github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch
• installation guide

Installation

• On Debian-based systems, use curl to install Meilisearch, then move the binary to /usr/local/bin/ to use it globally.
• On macOS, use brew to install Meilisearch.

Debian

sudo apt install curl -y
curl -L https://install.meilisearch.com | sh
sudo mv ./meilisearch /usr/local/bin/

macOS

brew update && brew install meilisearch

Windows

docker pull getmeili/meilisearch:latest
docker run -it --rm \
    -p 7700:7700 \
    -e MEILI_ENV='development' \
    -v $(pwd)/meili_data:/meili_data \
    getmeili/meilisearch:latest

Update

• With curl, just override existing binaries
• With homebrew, just update
• With Docker, just pull the new image

You will have to delete data.ms in meilisearch directory to update the database.

Production

Two ways to deploy Meilisearch in production:

• As a Docker container
• As a service

Docker

You can use the official Docker image to deploy Meilisearch.

Create a .env file with the following content.

# https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/learn/configuration/instance_options#environment
# production, development
MEILI_ENV=production
# https://www.meilisearch.com/docs/learn/configuration/instance_options#master-key
# openssl rand -hex 16
MEILI_MASTER_KEY=MASTER_KEY
APP_PORT=7700 # change port if needed

Replace MASTER_KEY with a 16-byte string, you can generate one with openssl.

openssl rand -hex 16

Create a docker-compose.yml file with the following content.

services:
  meilisearch:
    container_name: meilisearch
    image: getmeili/meilisearch:latest
    ports:
      - "${APP_PORT}:7700"
    env_file: .env
    restart: always
volumes:
  meilisearch_data:

You can define a different port in the .env with APP_PORT variable.

Start the container.

docker compose down -v
docker-compose up -d --remove-orphans

INFO

You can find a repository with all this configuration on kiwilan/meilisearch-docker.

Now you can create an NGINX VHost for Meilisearch.

Service

How to setup Meilisearch into production on Debian server.

• docs.meilisearch.com

Requirements

You have download the binary and move it to /usr/local/bin/, see installation.

Create user

Create a user for Meilisearch.

sudo useradd -d /var/lib/meilisearch -s /bin/false -m -r meilisearch

Create configuration

Create directories for data, dumps and snapshots.

sudo mkdir /var/lib/meilisearch/data /var/lib/meilisearch/dumps /var/lib/meilisearch/snapshots
sudo chown -R meilisearch:meilisearch /var/lib/meilisearch
sudo chmod 750 /var/lib/meilisearch

Create configuration file.

sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/meilisearch/meilisearch/latest/config.toml > /etc/meilisearch.toml

Finally, update the following lines in the /etc/meilisearch.toml file so Meilisearch uses the directories you created earlier to store its data:

sudo vim /etc/meilisearch.toml

Replacing MASTER_KEY with a 16-byte string, you can generate one with openssl.

openssl rand -hex 16

db_path = "/var/lib/meilisearch/data"
env = "production"
http_addr = "localhost:7700" # we will create a domain for it
master_key = "MASTER_KEY"
# ...
dump_dir = "/var/lib/meilisearch/dumps"
# ...
snapshot_dir = "/var/lib/meilisearch/snapshots"

/etc/meilisearch.toml

Create service

Create a service file for Meilisearch.

cat << EOF > /etc/systemd/system/meilisearch.service
[Unit]
Description=Meilisearch
After=systemd-user-sessions.service

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/meilisearch
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/meilisearch --config-file-path /etc/meilisearch.toml
User=meilisearch
Group=meilisearch

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

Enable and start the service.

sudo systemctl enable meilisearch
sudo systemctl start meilisearch

Check the status of the service.

sudo systemctl status meilisearch

You have to see Active: active (running). Now you can create an NGINX VHost for Meilisearch.

Update Meilisearch

To update Meilisearch, you can create a script to remove the data, dumps and snapshots directories and recreate them.

Stop the service.

sudo service meilisearch stop

Download new binaries.

mkdir -p ~/sandbox
cd ~/sandbox
curl -L https://install.meilisearch.com | sh
sudo mv ./meilisearch /usr/local/bin/
sudo chown meilisearch:meilisearch /usr/local/bin/meilisearch
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/meilisearch

Create a script to update Meilisearch.

sudo vim /var/lib/meilisearch/update

#!/bin/bash

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/meilisearch/data
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/meilisearch/dumps
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/meilisearch/snapshots

sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/meilisearch/data
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/meilisearch/dumps
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/meilisearch/snapshots

sudo chown -R meilisearch:meilisearch /var/lib/meilisearch
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/lib/meilisearch

/var/lib/meilisearch/update

Make it executable.

sudo chmod +x /var/lib/meilisearch/update

Execute the script.

/var/lib/meilisearch/update

Start the service.

sudo service meilisearch start

Check the status.

sudo service meilisearch status

NGINX & Meilisearch

NGINX

You can use NGINX as a reverse proxy for Meilisearch. You have to install it and create a VHost for it, check this guide

For Meilisearch you need to have endpoint, so you have to create VHost for it.

sudo vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/domain.com.conf

server {
  listen 80;
  listen [::]:80;
  http2 on;
  server_name domain.com;

  access_log /var/log/nginx/meilisearch.access.log;
  error_log /var/log/nginx/meilisearch.error.log;

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:7700; # change port if needed
  }
}

/etc/nginx/conf.d/domain.com.conf

You can now enable HTTPS with certbot, check this guide. After that, restart NGINX.

sudo service nginx reload