Typesense for Static WordPress

This plugin is a gem of a gift to the WordPress community. Embedding a modern and performant search interface into your website couldn’t possibly be easier.

The plugin uses the Algolia open-source vanilla JS libraries “InstantSearch.js” and “Autocomplete.js”, which communicate with your Typesense server using fetch requests in the browser; no connection to WordPress needed, and thus fully compatible with static generation.

Via their WP-Admin GUI, the software indexes your WP posts and pages as Typesense “documents” and “collections”; while the frontend search interface is pure React components fetching data from your Typesense instance.

I used the Typesense provided Docker image to spin up a self-hosted instance; added my instance API keys to the Typesense plugin settings in WP-Admin; indexed 4000+ posts in a couple minutes; added the default shortcode to a test page; ran a SimplyStatic export, and voilà, it works splendidly!

Important note for static site generation: Prior to running an index, you’ll need to filter the permalink; otherwise the search results will link to your WP:

/**
 * Filter Typesense document data before it is indexed.
**/

add_filter( 'cm_typesense_data_before_entry', function( $formatted_data, $raw_data, $object_id ) {
    if ( isset( $formatted_data['permalink'] ) ) {
        $formatted_data['permalink'] = str_replace(
            'wp[dot]example[dot]com',
            'example[dot]com',
            $formatted_data['permalink']
        );
    }

    return $formatted_data;
}, 10, 3 );

*WordPress[dot]org doesn’t permit URLs in reviews, hence why the [dot] chicanery in the above snippet.

Pax et bonum.