APSearch — Arabic & Persian Search

FAQ

Do I need to rebuild the index after adding a post?

No. Posts are indexed automatically when saved. A full rebuild is only needed after you install the plugin or change the normalization rules.

Does this slow down my site?

Search adds one LEFT JOIN on a single meta row per post. Indexing happens on save, not on view.

Does it work with a search plugin like Relevanssi or SearchWP?

Those plugins replace WordPress search entirely rather than filtering it, so this plugin steps aside and your results come from them. If Relevanssi is active you will see a one-time notice in the admin saying so.

You then have two choices: deactivate the other plugin and search with this one, or keep it and feed it this plugin’s normalization using the snippet in the next answer.

How do I make Relevanssi understand Arabic and Persian spelling?

Relevanssi stores search terms exactly as they are written, so کتاب‌ها (with ZWNJ) and کتابها stay different words to it, as do كتاب and کتاب, and ۱۴۰۳ and 1403.

Add this to your theme’s functions.php or a small site plugin:

add_filter(
    'relevanssi_remove_punctuation',
    function ( $string ) {
        if ( class_exists( 'APSearch_Normalizer' ) ) {
            $string = APSearch_Normalizer::normalize( $string );
        }
        return $string;
    },
    20
);

Relevanssi runs that filter inside its tokenizer, which it uses both when indexing your posts and when parsing what a visitor typed. Normalizing in one place therefore fixes both sides at once. Priority 20 makes it run after Relevanssi’s own punctuation handling.

Rebuild the Relevanssi index after adding this (Relevanssi’s own settings screen), or its stored terms will still be the unnormalized ones.

This is a documented starting point, not a supported integration — the snippet touches Relevanssi’s filter, and Relevanssi’s own settings still decide what gets indexed.

Does it support Urdu, Pashto, Kurdish or Hebrew?

Urdu, Pashto and Dari letter variants are covered. Hebrew needs no normalization of this kind and is unaffected.