Quickstart with the Python API client
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Supported platforms
The Algolia Python API client requires Python 3.4 or later.
Install
Install the latest version of the Python API client with pip:
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python -m pip install --upgrade algoliasearch
Quickstart sample app
To download and run a self-contained example, see the Python quickstart on GitHub.
In the following sections, you can learn how to index and search objects in 30 seconds.
Initialize the client
To start, you need to initialize the client. To do this, you need your Application ID and API Key. You can find both on your Algolia account.
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from algoliasearch.search_client import SearchClient
client = SearchClient.create('YourApplicationID', 'YourWriteAPIKey')
index = client.init_index('your_index_name')
The API key displayed here is your Admin API key. To maintain security, never use your Admin API key on your frontend, nor share it with anyone. In your frontend, use the search-only API key or any other key that has search-only rights.
Push data
Without any prior configuration, you can start indexing 500 contacts in the contacts
index using the following code:
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index = client.init_index('contacts')
batch = json.load(open('contacts.json'))
index.save_objects(batch, {'autoGenerateObjectIDIfNotExist': True})
Configure
You can customize settings to fine tune the search behavior. For example, you can add a custom ranking by number of followers to further enhance the built-in relevance:
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index.set_settings({"customRanking": ["desc(followers)"]})
You can also configure the list of attributes you want to index by order of importance (most important first).
Algolia is designed to suggest results as you type, which means you’ll generally search by prefix. In this case, the order of attributes is crucial to decide which hit is the best.
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index.set_settings({"searchableAttributes": ["lastname", "firstname", "company",
"email", "city", "address"]})
Search
You can now search for contacts by firstname
, lastname
, company
, etc. (even with typos):
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# Search for a first name
print(index.search('jimmie'))
# Search for a first name with typo
print(index.search('jimie'))
# Search for a company
print(index.search('california paint'))
# Search for a first name and a company
print(index.search('jimmie paint'))
Search UI
If you’re building a web app, you may be interested in using one of Algolias frontend search UI libraries.
The following example shows how to quickly build a frontend search using InstantSearch.js
index.html
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<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
<link
rel="stylesheet"
href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/instantsearch.css@8.1.0/themes/satellite-min.css"
integrity="sha256-p/rGN4RGy6EDumyxF9t7LKxWGg6/MZfGhJM/asKkqvA="
crossorigin="anonymous"
/>
</head>
<body>
<header>
<div id="search-box"></div>
</header>
<main>
<div id="hits"></div>
<div id="pagination"></div>
</main>
<script type="text/html" id="hit-template">
<div class="hit">
<p class="hit-name">
{{#helpers.highlight}}{ "attribute": "firstname" }{{/helpers.highlight}}
{{#helpers.highlight}}{ "attribute": "lastname" }{{/helpers.highlight}}
</p>
</div>
</script>
<script
src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/algoliasearch@4.22.0/dist/algoliasearch-lite.umd.js"
integrity="sha256-/2SlAlnMUV7xVQfSkUQTMUG3m2LPXAzbS8I+xybYKwA="
crossorigin="anonymous"
></script>
<script
src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/instantsearch.js@4.63.0/dist/instantsearch.production.min.js"
integrity="sha256-tP2geWC/2cT8rjeVSRumDQXTieBNjUyZjvON1HzWqso="
crossorigin="anonymous"
></script>
<script src="app.js"></script>
</body>
app.js
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// Replace with your own values
const searchClient = algoliasearch(
'YourApplicationID',
'YourSearchOnlyAPIKey' // search only API key, not admin API key
)
const search = instantsearch({
indexName: 'contacts',
searchClient,
routing: true,
})
search.addWidgets([
instantsearch.widgets.configure({
hitsPerPage: 10,
}),
])
search.addWidgets([
instantsearch.widgets.searchBox({
container: '#search-box',
placeholder: 'Search for contacts',
}),
])
search.addWidgets([
instantsearch.widgets.hits({
container: '#hits',
templates: {
item: document.getElementById('hit-template').innerHTML,
empty: `We didn't find any results for the search <em>"{{query}}"</em>`,
},
}),
])
search.start()