Join Lyra's Slack channel

If you need more info, help, or want to provide general feedback on Lyra, join the Lyra Slack channel

Installation

You can install Lyra using npm, yarn, pnpm:

npm i @lyrasearch/lyra

yarn add @lyrasearch/lyra

pnpm add @lyrasearch/lyra

Or import it directly in a browser module:

<html>
  <body>
    <script type="module">
      import { create, search, insert } from "https://unpkg.com/@lyrasearch/lyra@latest/dist/index.js";

      // ...
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Read the complete documentation at https://docs.lyrasearch.io/.

Usage

Lyra is quite simple to use. The first thing to do is to create a new database instance and set an indexing schema:

import { create, insert, remove, search } from "@lyrasearch/lyra";

const db = await create({
  schema: {
    author: "string",
    quote: "string",
  },
});

If you are using Node.js without ESM, please see build section below on how to properly require Lyra.

Lyra will only index string properties, but will allow you to set and store additional data if needed.

Once the db instance is created, you can start adding some documents:

await insert(db, {
  quote: "It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.",
  author: "Aristotle",
});

await insert(db, {
  quote: "If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.",
  author: "Steve Jobs",
});

await insert(db, {
  quote: "If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.",
  author: "Jim Rohn",
});

await insert(db, {
  quote: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take",
  author: "Wayne Gretzky - Michael Scott",
});

After the data has been inserted, you can finally start to query the database.

const searchResult = await search(db, {
  term: "if",
  properties: "*",
  boost: {
    author: 1.5 // optional: boost author field by x1.5
  }
});

In the case above, you will be searching for all the documents containing the word if, looking up in every schema property (AKA index):

{
  elapsed: 184541n, // Elapsed time in nanoseconds
  hits: [
    {
      id: '41013877-56',
      score: 0.025085832971998432,
      document: {
        quote: 'If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.',
        author: 'Steve Jobs'
      }
    },
    {
      id: '41013877-107',
      score: 0.02315615351261394,
      document: {
        quote: 'If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.',
        author: 'Jim Rohn'
      }
    }
  ],
  count: 2
}

You can also restrict the lookup to a specific property:

const searchResult = await search(db, {
  term: "Michael",
  properties: ["author"],
});

Result:

{
  elapsed: 172166n,
  hits: [
    {
      id: '41045799-144',
      score: 0.12041199826559248,
      document: {
        quote: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take",
        author: 'Wayne Gretzky - Michael Scott'
      }
    }
  ],
  count: 1
}

If needed, you can also delete a given document by using the remove method:

await remove(db, "41045799-144");

Lyra exposes a built-in formatNanoseconds function to format the elapsed time in a human-readable format:

import { formatNanoseconds } from "@lyrasearch/lyra";

const searchResult = await search(db, {
  term: "if",
  properties: "*",
});

console.log(`Search took ${formatNanoseconds(searchResult.elapsed)}`);
// Search took 164μs

Using with CommonJS

From version 0.4.0, Lyra is packaged as ES modules, suitable for Node.js, Deno, Bun and modern browsers.

In most cases, simply import or @lyrasearch/lyra will suffice ✨.

In Node.js, when not using ESM (with "type": "module" in the package.json), you have several ways to properly require Lyra. Starting with version 0.4.0 it becomes:

async function main() {
  const { create, insert } = await import("@lyrasearch/lyra");

  const db = create(/* ... */);
  insert(db, {
    /* ... */
  });
}

main().catch(console.error);

Use CJS requires

As of version 0.4.0, Lyra methods can be required as CommonJS modules by requiring from @lyrasearch/lyra/cjs.

If your Lyra 0.3.0 code was

const { create, insert } = require("@lyrasearch/lyra");

const db = create(/* ... */);
insert(db, {
  /* ... */
});

then starting with version 0.4.0 it becomes:

const { create, insert } = require("@lyrasearch/lyra/cjs")

create(/* ... */)
  .then(db => insert(db, { /* ... */ })
  .catch(console.error)

Note that only main methods are supported so for internals and other supported exports you still have to use await import.

Language

Lyra supports multiple languages. By default, it will use the english language,

You can specify a different language by using the defaultLanguage property during Lyra initialization.

By default, Lyra will analyze your input using an English Porter Stemmer function.
You can replace the default stemmer with a custom one, or a pre-built one shipped with the default Lyra installation.

Example:

import { create } from "@lyrasearch/lyra";
import { stemmer } from "@lyrasearch/components/stemmer/it";

const db = await create({
  schema: {
    author: "string",
    quote: "string",
  },
  defaultLanguage: "italian",
  components: {
    tokenizer: {
      stemmingFn: stemmer,
    },
  },
});

Example using CJS (see using with commonJS above):

async function main() {
  const { create } = await import("@lyrasearch/lyra");
  const { stemmer } = await import("@lyrasearch/components/stemmer/it");

  const db = await create({
    schema: {
      author: "string",
      quote: "string",
    },
    defaultLanguage: "italian",
    components: {
      tokenizer: {
        stemmingFn: stemmer,
      },
    },
  });
}

main();

Right now, Lyra supports 24 languages and stemmers out of the box:

Armenian
Arabic
Danish
Spanish
English
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian
Irish
Dutch
Nepali
Norwegian
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian

Official Docs