[Seeking Alpha testers] Search via Algolia

Announcements
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Hi all,

We’re looking for volunteers for an Alpha test of a new feature - search in your Bubble app powered by Algolia. Algolia is a 3rd party service that provides strong and fast search capabilities. With this feature, you pick which data types you want to send to Algolia for indexing, and use Algolia for search boxes or as a generic data source.

Important caveats:

  • This requires you to use your own Algolia key, so you will need an account with them (they have both a free tier and a free trial for higher tiers)
  • This feature will be for the Professional tier and above, so to participate in the Alpha, your app will need to meet this criteria

If you’re interested in participating, please DM me with the name of the app you would like to activate this for. You’ll be given more instructions on how this works.

Cheers to @aless for working on this feature in parallel to his continued hard work on the CSV exports feature!

Thanks,
Allen

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Is there a Bubble-built example floating around anywhere for folks to check out?

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Sure - this is on my personal app (so excuse the poor design!) but this page implements Algolia to power a repeating group and to power a searchbox: https://halfbakedoath.bubbleapps.io/algolia-demo

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@joe5

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Awesome! Notable difference. Thanks for sharing!

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Been waiting for this for so long thank you!

Quick question, is there a way to incorporate fixing the geographic search issues on the native bubble search box with this, and geographic search quickness in general on Bubble? See this thread for more information:

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OMG I am stoked for this.

@allenyang I am looking to build site-wide search into Nucode. This would be awesome!

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That sounds like a separate issue but I’ll reach out over DM to clarify and make sure I understand what you’re referencing

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Will this be a plugin or integration from your side?

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Really awesome news! Not a great timing for testing right now, but good luck for those who participate and looking very much forward to see how this progresses!

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For those thinking, “oh, I’ll just replace MY db with algolia…”

THATS NOT WHUT THIS S IS FOR.

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This is built natively into Bubble - comparable to how Google Maps / Geocode work. (You will need to enter your Algolia keys in the same Settings page!)

And thank you, @keith, for pointing that out - to reiterate, the intent with this feature is not to replace your Bubble DB with Algolia :slight_smile: (We won’t stop you from trying it, but I don’t think it’ll work very well like that…)

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Much appreciated allen to clarify this. Hopefully next task after this succesful implementation will be looking at integrating Firebase natively into Bubble.

Speeding up the database will allow us to beat traditional development all day long…

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I came across this Plugin today from @ZeroqodeSupport . It allows to integrate Algolia Search…

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This is awesome @allenyang, thanks for the update here. What’s your ETA for launch of this?

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Have you tested the plugin yourself @nocodeventure? If so, how well did it work?

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I haven’t tested but @levon can answer that

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We’ll probably launch to a Beta (available to all users) soon!

(CLARIFICATION: Beta and full rollout will still have the feature limited to apps on the Professional plan and above)

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Firstly, this is amazing. I’m dying to have this natively. Could really use it for a client deployment and would be willing to alpha test this second (though sadly, I’ll be starting them off on the personal plan - not the professional plan). Which brings me to my questions:

  1. I’m seeing conflicting information in this thread. First:

    This feature will be for the Professional tier and above, so to participate in the Alpha, your app will need to meet this criteria

    Then this was said:

    We’ll probably launch to a Beta (available to all users) soon!

    So who will actually be able to use this feature? All bubble users or only those who pay at least $115 per month?

  2. Can you elaborate on the keyword soon? Are we talking like three months soon? Less than a month? It’s fine if you need to keep things ambiguous, I understand that, I’m just curious

Also, @levon , I’m looking at using your Algolia plugin, have read all your documentation, and opened all your elements (as far as I can tell) and am wondering, “Does Update also create an Algolia object if it doesn’t exist?” The keyword create is in none of your documentation (well, it shows up but only when talking about manually creating an index / adding data from the Algolia dashboard)… so it has me worried that I can’t actually add to an algolia index from Bubble using your plugin… And I’ve been resistant to setup an Algolia account only to find out that that is true (since I really do need to be able to add objects)

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  1. Sorry for the confusion - our plan is that the feature will remain Professional and above even after it ‘officially’ rolls out.

  2. Barring any unforeseen bugs or obstacles, “soon” = this week or next (but will still be labeled a “Beta”, per our new Alpha / Beta staging - it will be available to all users Professional and above when in Beta, ie you don’t need us to “turn the feature on” for you)

(But note that if your app already has the feature turned on as part of this Alpha, it will stay on in the transition to a Beta)

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