Search Documentation
Backstage Search
What is it?
Backstage Search lets you find the right information you are looking for in the Backstage ecosystem.
Features
- A search that lets you bring your own search engine.
- A search that lets you extend it by creating collators for easily indexing content from plugins and other sources.
- A search that lets you create composable search page experiences.
- A search that lets you customize the look and feel of each search result.
See the more detailed architecture and tech stack.
Project roadmap
No current plans.
Supported
The following sections show the plugins and search engines currently supported by Backstage Search.
Plugins integrated with Backstage Search
| Plugin | Support Status |
|---|---|
| Software Catalog | ✅ |
| TechDocs | ✅ |
| Stack Overflow | ✅ |
Search engines
See Backstage Search Architecture to get an overview of how the search engines are used.
| Search Engines | Support Status |
|---|---|
| ElasticSearch | ✅ |
| Lunr | ✅ |
| Postgres | Community ✅ |
Reach out to us if you want to chat about support for more plugin integrations and search engines.
Get involved
For any questions, feedback, or to help move search forward, reach out to us in the #search channel of our Discord chatroom.
Use Cases supported
Backstage Search Pre-Alpha
Search Frontend letting you search through the entities of the software catalog.
The pre-alpha is intended to solve for the following user stories, but will get there by means of a front-end only, non-extensible MVP.
- As a software engineer I should be able to navigate to a search page and search for entities registered in the Software Catalog.
- As a software engineer I should be able to use the search input field in the sidebar to search for entities registered in the Software Catalog.
- As a software engineer I should be able to see the number of results my search returned.
- As a software engineer I should be able to filter on metadata (kind, lifecycle) when I’ve performed a search.
- As a software engineer I should be able to hide the filters if I don’t need to use them.
Backstage Search Alpha
Basic “out-of-the-box” in-memory indexing process of entities, and their metadata, registered to the Software Catalog.
We will consider Backstage Search to be in alpha when the above use-cases are met, but built on top of a flexible, extensible platform.
- As an integrator, I should be able to provide all of the pre-alpha experiences to my users if I choose, but also be able to customize the experience using a composable set of components.
- As a plugin developer, I should have a standard way to expose my plugin's data to Backstage Search.
- As an integrator, I should still be able to expose everything in the Software Catalog in search, but it should be possible to customize what is searchable.
- As an integrator, although I should be able to customize all of the above, it should be possible to have the pre-alpha user experiences covered without having to set up and configure a search engine.
Backstage Search Beta
At least one production-ready search engine that supports the same use-cases as in the alpha.
We will consider Backstage Search to be in a beta phase when the above use-cases are met, and can be deployed using a production-ready search engine.
- As an integrator, I should be able to power my Backstage Search experience (including querying and indexing) using a production-ready search engine like ElasticSearch.
- As an integrator, I should be able to configure the connection to my search engine in app_config.yaml.
- As an integrator, I should be able to tune the queries sent to my chosen search engine according to my organization's needs, but a sensible default query should be in place so that I am not required to do so.
Backstage Search 1.0
A stable Search API for plugin developers to add search to their plugins, and app integrators to expose that to their users.
We will consider Backstage Search to be 1.0 when the above use-cases are met, and an ecosystem of search-enabled plugins are available and stable.
- As a plugin developer, there should be at least one example of a Backstage plugin that integrates with search that I can use as inspiration for my own plugin's search capabilities (for example, the TechDocs plugin).
- As an app integrator, there should be plenty of examples and documentation on how to customize and extend search in my Backstage instance to meet my organization's needs.