Guides / Getting started / Quick start

Quickstart with the Scala API client

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Supported platforms

The Algolia Scala API client requires Scala versions 2.11, 2.12, or 2.13.

Install

Install via Maven

With Maven, add the following dependency to your pom.xml file:

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<dependency>
    <groupId>com.algolia</groupId>
    <artifactId>algoliasearch-scala_2.11</artifactId>
    <version>[1,)</version>
</dependency>

For snapshots, add the sonatype repository:

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<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>oss-sonatype</id>
        <name>oss-sonatype</name>
        <url>https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/</url>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
        </snapshots>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Install with sbt

Add the following dependency to your build.sbt file:

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libraryDependencies += "com.algolia" %% "algoliasearch-scala" % "[1.0,2.0["

For snapshots, add the sonatype repository:

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resolvers += "Sonatype OSS Snapshots" at "https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots"

DSL

The main goal of this client is to provide a human-accessible and readable DSL for using AlgoliaSearch.

The entry point of the DSL is the algolia.AlgoliaDSL object. This DSL is used in the execute method of algolia.AlgoliaClient.

As we want to provide human-readable DSL, there’s more than one way to use this DSL. For example, to get an object by its objectID:

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client.execute { from index "index" objectId "myId" }

// or

client.execute { get / "index" / "myId" }

Future

The execute method always returns a scala.concurrent.Future. Depending on the operation, it’s parametrized by a case class. For example:

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val future: Future[Search] =
    client.execute {
        search into "index" query "a"
    }

JSON as case class

Putting or getting objects from the API is wrapped into case class automatically with json4s.

If you want to get objects, search for them and unwrap the result:

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case class Contact(firstname: String,
                   lastname: String,
                   followers: Int,
                   company: String)

val future: Future[Seq[Contact]] =
    client
        .execute {
            search into "index" query "a"
        }
        .map { search =>
            search.as[Contact]
        }

If you want to get the full results (with _highlightResult, etc.):

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case class EnhanceContact(firstname: String,
                          lastname: String,
                          followers: Int,
                          company: String,
                          objectID: String,
                          _highlightResult: Option[Map[String, HighlightResult]],
                          _snippetResult: Option[Map[String, SnippetResult]],
                          _rankingInfo: Option[RankingInfo]) extends Hit

val future: Future[Seq[EnhanceContact]] =
    client
        .execute {
            search into "index" query "a"
        }
        .map { search =>
            search.asHit[EnhanceContact]
        }

For indexing documents, pass an instance of your case class to the DSL:

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client.execute {
    index into "contacts" `object` Contact("Jimmie", "Barninger", 93, "California Paint")
}

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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// The index doesn't need to be initialized
val client = new AlgoliaClient("YourApplicationID", "YourWriteAPIKey")

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, only use the search-only API key or any other key that has search-only rights.

Push data

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// For the DSL
import algolia.AlgoliaDsl._

// For basic Future support, you might want to change this by your own ExecutionContext
import scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext.Implicits.global

// case class of your objects
case class Contact(firstname: String,
                   lastname: String,
                   followers: Int,
                   compagny: String)

val indexing1: Future[Indexing] = client.execute {
    index into "contacts" `object` Contact("Jimmie", "Barninger", 93, "California Paint")
}

val indexing2: Future[Indexing] = client.execute {
    index into "contacts" `object` Contact("Warren", "Speach", 42, "Norwalk Crmc")
}

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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client.execute {
    setSettings of "myIndex" `with` IndexSettings(
        customRanking = Some(Seq(CustomRanking.desc("followers")))
    )
}

You can also configure the list of attributes you want to index by order of importance (most important first).

Algolia suggests results as you type, which means you’ll generally search by prefix. In this case, the order of attributes is crucial in deciding which hit is the best.

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client.execute {
    setSettings of "myIndex" `with` IndexSettings(
        searchableAttributes = Some(Seq("lastname", "firstname", "company"))
    )
}

Once configured, you can search for contacts by attributes such as firstname, lastname, or company (even with typos):

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// Search for a first name
client.execute { search into "contacts" query Query(query = Some("jimmie")) }

// Search for a first name with typo
client.execute { search into "contacts" query Query(query = Some("jimie")) }

// Search for a company
client.execute { search into "contacts" query Query(query = Some("california paint")) }

// Search for a first name and a company
client.execute { search into "contacts" query Query(query = Some("jimmie paint")) }

Search UI

Use one of Algolia’s frontend libraries to build your search UI:

However, if you don’t want to use the libraries, you can build a custom UI:

  1. Design UI components with your preferred frontend system: a search box, results display, filters, and any other desired Algolia features
  2. Send search requests with the API client
  3. Parse the JSON response from the search request and display the results in your custom UI.
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