How to Use Elasticsearch from Scratch in Laravel?

When i was working on my ecommerce website on laravel, i was need to apply search engine for my website. I was confused and thinking what i have to use, but my senior suggested to me elasticsearch for search engine. But i had no experience elasticsearch. I need to learn from starting but i found how to install elasticsearch and use in our laravel application.

Why we choose elasticsearch for search engine because elasticsearch provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and JSON documents. So, in this example i going to give you full example from scratch, after this example you can find bellow preview.

Preview

Step 1: Install Elasticsearch

in first step you should install elasticsearch in your local machine. If you haven't installed then you can install from here: ElasticSearch Docs.

If you are working on ubuntu system then you can install easily from here : How to confige Elasticsearch in our local system.

Step 2: Package Installation

In this step we will install elasticquent/Elasticquent package for use elasticsearch api. so first fire bellow line add in your composer.json file and then update composer:

"elasticquent/elasticquent": "dev-master"

After install elasticquent/elasticquent package, we need to add provider path and alias path in config/app.php file so open that file and add bellow code.

config/app.php

return [
	......
	'provides' => [
		......
		......,
		Elasticquent\ElasticquentServiceProvider::class,
	],
	'aliases' => [
		......
		......,
		'Es' => Elasticquent\ElasticquentElasticsearchFacade::class,
	],
]

Now we need to generate configration file for elastichsearch so fire bellow command in your terminal:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Elasticquent\ElasticquentServiceProvider"

Step 3: Create items table and model

In this step we have to create migration for items table using Laravel 5 php artisan command, so first fire bellow command:

php artisan make:migration create_items_table

After this command you will find one file in following path database/migrations and you have to put bellow code in your migration file for create items table.

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;

class CreateItemsTable extends Migration
{

    public function up()
    {
        Schema::create('items', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->increments('id');
            $table->string('title');
            $table->text('description');
            $table->timestamps();
        });
    }

    public function down()
    {
        Schema::drop("items");
    }
}

After craete "items" table you should craete Item model for items, so first create file in this path app/Item.php and put bellow content in item.php file:

app/Item.php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Elasticquent\ElasticquentTrait;

class Item extends Model
{
    use ElasticquentTrait;

    public $fillable = ['title','description'];

}

Step 4: Route and Controller

In this step you have to add some route in your route file. so first copy bellow route and put in your file.

app/Http/routes.php

Route::get('ItemSearch', 'ItemSearchController@index');
Route::post('ItemSearchCreate', 'ItemSearchController@create');

Ok, now we should create new controller as ItemSearchController in this path app/Http/Controllers/ItemSearchController.php. this controller will manage all search from elastichsearch and add to index:

app/Http/Controllers/ItemSearchController.php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Requests;
use App\Item;

class ItemSearchController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource.
     *
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response
     */
    public function index(Request $request)
    {
    	if($request->has('search')){
    		$items = Item::search($request->input('search'))->toArray();
    	}
        return view('ItemSearch',compact('items'));
    }

    /**
     * Display a listing of the resource.
     *
     * @return \Illuminate\Http\Response
     */
    public function create(Request $request)
    {
    	$this->validate($request, [
	    	'title' => 'required',
            'description' => 'required',
        ]);

        $item = Item::create($request->all());
        $item->addToIndex();

        return redirect()->back();
    }
}

Step 5: Create View

This is a last step and you have to create ItemSearch.blade.php file for manage listing on search function so just copy and paste this file :

ItemSearch.blade.php

@extends('layouts.app')

@section('content')
<div class="row">
    <div class="col-md-8 col-md-offset-2">
        <h1 class="text-primary" style="text-align: center;">Laravel 5 Search Using Elasticsearch</h1>
    </div>
</div>

<div class="container">
	<div class="panel panel-primary">
	  <div class="panel-heading">
	  	<div class="row">
		  <div class="col-lg-6">
		    {!! Form::open(array('method'=>'get','class'=>'')) !!}
		    <div class="input-group">

		      <input name="search" value="{{ old('search') }}" type="text" class="form-control" placeholder="Search for...">
		      <span class="input-group-btn">
		        <button class="btn btn-default" type="submit">Go!</button>
		      </span>

		    </div><!-- /input-group -->
		    {!! Form::close() !!}
		  </div><!-- /.col-lg-6 -->
		</div><!-- /.row -->
	  </div>
	  <div class="panel-body">

	    	
	    	<div class="row">
		  		<div class="col-lg-6">
			    	@if(!empty($items))
			    		@foreach($items as $key => $value)
			    			<h3 class="text-danger">{{ $value['title'] }}</h3>
			    			<p>{{ $value['description'] }}</p>
			    		@endforeach
			    	@endif
		  		</div>
		  		<div class="col-lg-6">
		  			<div class="panel panel-default">
	  					<div class="panel-heading">
	  						Create New Items
	  					</div>
	  					<div class="panel-body">

	  						@if (count($errors) > 0)
								<div class="alert alert-danger">
									<strong>Whoops!</strong> There were some problems with your input.<br><br>
									<ul>
										@foreach ($errors->all() as $error)
											<li>{{ $error }}</li>
										@endforeach
									</ul>
								</div>
							@endif

	  						{!! Form::open(array('url' => 'ItemSearchCreate','autocomplete'=>'off')) !!}
	  							<div class="row">
			                        <div class="col-xs-12 col-sm-12 col-md-12">
			                            <div class="form-group">
			                                <strong>Title:</strong>
			                                {!! Form::text('title', null, array('placeholder' => 'Title','class' => 'form-control')) !!}
			                            </div>
			                        </div>
			                        <div class="col-xs-12 col-sm-12 col-md-12">
			                            <div class="form-group">
			                                <strong>Description:</strong>
			                                {!! Form::textarea('description', null, array('placeholder' => 'Description','class' => 'form-control','style'=>'height:100px')) !!}
			                            </div>
			                        </div>
			                    </div>

			                    <div class="text-center">
			                    	<button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary">Submit</button>
			                    </div>

	  						{!! Form::close() !!}

	  					</div>
	  				</div>
		  		</div>
		  	</div>

	  </div>
	</div>
</div>
@endsection

Now you can check in your project and also you can get more information from here : elasticquent/Elasticquent.