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How to implement your own Search API

The Search plugin provides implementation of one primary API by default: the SearchApi, which is responsible for talking to the search-backend to query search results.

There may be occasions where you need to implement this API yourself, to customize it to your own needs - for example if you have your own search backend that you want to talk to. The purpose of this guide is to walk you through how to do that in two steps.

1. Implement the SearchApi interface according to your needs.

export class SearchClient implements SearchApi {
  // your implementation
}

2. Override the API ref searchApiRef with your new implemented API in the App.tsx using ApiFactories. Read more about App APIs.

const app = createApp({
  apis: [
    // SearchApi
    createApiFactory({
      api: searchApiRef,
      deps: { discovery: discoveryApiRef },
      factory({ discovery }) {
        return new SearchClient({ discoveryApi: discovery });
      },
    }),
  ],
});

How to index TechDocs documents

The TechDocs plugin has supported integrations to Search, meaning that it provides a default collator ready to be used.

The purpose of this guide is to walk you through how to register the DefaultTechDocsCollator in your App, so that you can get TechDocs documents indexed.

If you have been through the Getting Started with Search guide, you should have the packages/backend/src/plugins/search.ts file available. If so, you can go ahead and follow this guide - if not, start by going through the getting started guide.

1. Import the DefaultTechDocsCollator from @backstage/plugin-techdocs-backend.

import { DefaultTechDocsCollator } from '@backstage/plugin-techdocs-backend';

2. Register the DefaultTechDocsCollator with the IndexBuilder.

indexBuilder.addCollator({
  defaultRefreshIntervalSeconds: 600,
  collator: DefaultTechDocsCollator.fromConfig(config, {
    discovery,
    logger,
  }),
});

You should now have your TechDocs documents indexed to your search engine of choice!

If you want your users to be able to filter down to the techdocs type when searching, you can update your SearchPage.tsx file in packages/app/src/components/search by adding techdocs to the list of values of the SearchType component.

<Paper className={classes.filters}>
  <SearchType
    values={['techdocs', 'software-catalog']}
    name="type"
    defaultValue="software-catalog"
  />
  ...
</Paper>