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Setting up site search
Material for MkDocs provides an excellent client-side search implementation, omitting the need for the integration of third-party services, which might not be compliant with privacy regulations. Moreover, search even works offline, allowing users to download your documentation.
Configuration
Built-in search plugin
:octicons-tag-24: 0.1.0 · :octicons-cpu-24: Plugin
The built-in search plugin integrates seamlessly with Material for MkDocs,
adding multilingual client-side search with lunr and lunr-languages. It's
enabled by default, but must be re-added to mkdocs.yml
when other plugins
are used:
plugins:
- search
The following configuration options are supported:
lang
{ #+search.lang }-
:octicons-milestone-24: Default: automatically set – This option allows to include the language-specific stemmers provided by lunr-languages. Note that Material for MkDocs will set this automatically based on the site language, but it may be overridden, e.g. to support multiple languages:
=== "A single language"
``` yaml plugins: - search: lang: en ```
=== "Multiple languages"
``` yaml plugins: - search: lang: # (1)! - en - de ``` 1. Be aware that including support for other languages increases the general JavaScript payload by around 20kb (before `gzip`) and by another 15-30kb per language.
The following languages are supported by lunr-languages:
ar
– Arabicda
– Danishde
– Germandu
– Dutchen
– Englishes
– Spanishfi
– Finnishfr
– Frenchhi
– Hindihu
– Hungarianhy
– Armenianit
– Italianja
– Japanesekn
- Kannadako
– Koreanno
– Norwegianpt
– Portuguesero
– Romanianru
– Russiansa
– Sanskritsv
– Swedishta
– Tamilte
– Teluguth
– Thaitr
– Turkishvi
– Vietnamesezh
– Chinese
Material for MkDocs goes to great lengths to support languages that are not part of this list by automatically falling back to the stemmer yielding the best result.
separator
{ #+search.separator }-
:octicons-milestone-24: Default: automatically set – The separator for indexing and query tokenization can be customized, making it possible to index parts of words separated by other characters than whitespace and
-
, e.g. by including.
:plugins: - search: separator: '[\s\-\.]+'
With :octicons-tag-24: 9.0.0, a faster and more flexible tokenizer method is shipped, allowing for tokenizing with lookahead, which yields more influence on the way documents are indexed. As a result, we use the following separator setting for this site's search:
plugins: - search: separator: '[\s\-,:!=\[\]()"/]+|(?!\b)(?=[A-Z][a-z])|\.(?!\d)|&[lg]t;'
Broken into its parts, the separator induces the following behavior:
=== "Special characters"
``` [\s\-,:!=\[\]()"/]+ ``` The first part of the expression inserts token boundaries for each document before and after whitespace, hyphens, commas, brackets and other special characters. If several of those special characters are adjacent, they are treated as one.
=== "Case changes"
``` (?!\b)(?=[A-Z][a-z]) ``` Many programming languages have naming conventions like `PascalCase` or `camelCase`. By adding this subexpression to the separator, [words are split at case changes], tokenizing the word `PascalCase` into `Pascal` and `Case`. [:octicons-arrow-right-24: Read more on tokenizing case changes] [tokenize case changes]
=== "Version strings"
``` \.(?!\d) ``` When adding `.` to the separator, version strings like `1.2.3` are split into `1`, `2` and `3`, which makes them undiscoverable via search. When using this subexpression, a small lookahead is introduced which will [preserve version strings] and keep them discoverable. [:octicons-arrow-right-24: Read more on tokenizing version numbers] [tokenize version numbers]
=== "HTML/XML tags"
``` &[lg]t; ``` If your documentation includes HTML/XML code examples, you may want to allow users to find specific tag names. Unfortunately, the `<` and `>` control characters are encoded in code blocks as `<` and `>`. Adding this subexpression to the separator allows for just that. [:octicons-arrow-right-24: Read more on tokenizing HTML/XML tags] [tokenize html-xml tags]
Chinese language support
:octicons-heart-fill-24:{ .mdx-heart } Sponsors only{ .mdx-insiders } · :octicons-tag-24: insiders-4.14.0 · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
Insiders adds search support for the Chinese language (see our [blog article]
chinese search from May 2022) by integrating with the text segmentation
library jieba, which can be installed with pip
.
pip install jieba
If jieba is installed, the built-in search plugin automatically detects Chinese characters and runs them through the segmenter. The following configuration options are available:
jieba_dict
{ #+search.jieba_dict }-
:octicons-tag-24: insiders-4.17.2 · :octicons-milestone-24: Default: none – This option allows for specifying a custom dictionary to be used by jieba for segmenting text, replacing the default dictionary:
plugins: - search: jieba_dict: dict.txt # (1)!
-
The following alternative dictionaries are provided by jieba:
- dict.txt.small – 占用内存较小的词典文件
- dict.txt.big – 支持繁体分词更好的词典文件
-
jieba_dict_user
{ #+search.jieba_dict_user }-
:octicons-tag-24: insiders-4.17.2 · :octicons-milestone-24: Default: none – This option allows for specifying an additional user dictionary to be used by jieba for segmenting text, augmenting the default dictionary:
plugins: - search: jieba_dict_user: user_dict.txt
User dictionaries can be used for tuning the segmenter to preserve technical terms.
Search suggestions
:octicons-tag-24: 7.2.0 · :octicons-unlock-24: Feature flag · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
When search suggestions are enabled, the search will display the likeliest
completion for the last word which can be accepted with the ++arrow-right++ key.
Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml
:
theme:
features:
- search.suggest
Searching for :octicons-search-24: search su yields ^^search suggestions^^ as a suggestion.
Search highlighting
:octicons-tag-24: 7.2.0 · :octicons-unlock-24: Feature flag · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
When search highlighting is enabled and a user clicks on a search result,
Material for MkDocs will highlight all occurrences after following the link.
Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml
:
theme:
features:
- search.highlight
Searching for :octicons-search-24: code blocks highlights all occurrences of both terms.
Search sharing
:octicons-tag-24: 7.2.0 · :octicons-unlock-24: Feature flag
When search sharing is activated, a :material-share-variant: share button is
rendered next to the reset button, which allows to deep link to the current
search query and result. Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml
:
theme:
features:
- search.share
When a user clicks the share button, the URL is automatically copied to the clipboard.
Usage
Search boosting
Pages can be boosted in search with the front matter search.boost
property,
which will make them rank higher. Add the following lines at the top of a
Markdown file:
=== ":material-arrow-up-circle: Rank up"
``` yaml
---
search:
boost: 2 # (1)!
---
# Document title
...
```
1. :woman_in_lotus_position: When boosting pages, be gentle and start with
__low values__.
=== ":material-arrow-down-circle: Rank down"
``` yaml
---
search:
boost: 0.5
---
# Document title
...
```
Search exclusion
:octicons-tag-24: 9.0.0 · :octicons-beaker-24: Experimental
Pages can be excluded from search with the front matter search.exclude
property, removing them from the index. Add the following lines at the top of a
Markdown file:
---
search:
exclude: true
---
# Document title
...
Excluding sections
When Attribute Lists is enabled, specific sections of pages can be excluded
from search by adding the data-search-exclude
pragma after a Markdown
heading:
=== ":octicons-file-code-16: docs/page.md
"
``` markdown
# Document title
## Section 1
The content of this section is included
## Section 2 { data-search-exclude }
The content of this section is excluded
```
=== ":octicons-codescan-16: search_index.json
"
``` json
{
...
"docs": [
{
"location":"page/",
"text":"",
"title":"Document title"
},
{
"location":"page/#section-1",
"text":"<p>The content of this section is included</p>",
"title":"Section 1"
}
]
}
```
Excluding blocks
When Attribute Lists is enabled, specific sections of pages can be excluded
from search by adding the data-search-exclude
pragma after a Markdown
inline- or block-level element:
=== ":octicons-file-code-16: docs/page.md
"
``` markdown
# Document title
The content of this block is included
The content of this block is excluded
{ data-search-exclude }
```
=== ":octicons-codescan-16: search_index.json
"
``` json
{
...
"docs": [
{
"location":"page/",
"text":"<p>The content of this block is included</p>",
"title":"Document title"
}
]
}
```