silverstripe-fulltextsearch/docs/en/03_configuration/32_querying_the_index.md

Querying an index

This is where the magic happens. You will construct the search terms and other parameters required to form a SearchQuery object, and pass that into a SearchIndex to get results.

Building a SearchQuery

First, you'll need to construct a new SearchQuery object:

use SilverStripe\FullTextSearch\Search\Queries\SearchQuery;

$query = SearchQuery::create();

You can then alter the SearchQuery with a number of methods:

addSearchTerm()

The simplest - pass through a string to search your index for.

use SilverStripe\FullTextSearch\Search\Queries\SearchQuery;

$query = SearchQuery::create()
    ->addSearchTerm('fire');

You can also limit this to specific fields by passing an array as the second argument:

use SilverStripe\FullTextSearch\Search\Queries\SearchQuery;
use Page;

$query = SearchQuery::create()
    ->addSearchTerm('on fire', [Page::class . '_Title']);

addFuzzySearchTerm()

Pass through a string to search your index for, with "fuzzier" matching - this means that a term like "fishing" would also likely find results containing "fish" or "fisher". Otherwise behaves the same as addSearchTerm().

use SilverStripe\FullTextSearch\Search\Queries\SearchQuery;

$query = SearchQuery::create()
    ->addFuzzySearchTerm('fire');

addClassFilter()

Only query a specific class in the index, optionally including subclasses.

use SilverStripe\FullTextSearch\Search\Queries\SearchQuery;
use My\Namespace\PageType\SpecialPage;

$query = SearchQuery::create()
    ->addClassFilter(SpecialPage::class, false); // only return results from SpecialPages, not subclasses

Querying an index

Once you have your query constructed, you need to run it against your index.

use SilverStripe\FullTextSearch\Search\Queries\SearchQuery;
use My\Namespace\Index\MyIndex;

$query = SearchQuery::create()->addSearchTerm('fire');
$results = singleton(MyIndex::class)->search($query);

The return value of a search() call is an object which contains a few properties:

• Matches: ArrayList of the current "page" of search results.
• Suggestion: (optional) Any suggested spelling corrections in the original query notation
• SuggestionNice: (optional) Any suggested spelling corrections for display (without query notation)
• SuggestionQueryString (optional) Link to repeat the search with suggested spelling corrections