Directus Meilisearch Extension

A powerful Directus extension to synchronize your content seamlessly with Meilisearch. It provides real-time updates, advanced filtering, and instant search capabilities for your Directus projects.

🌟 Key Features

• Real-Time Synchronization: Create, update, or delete items in Directus, and they appear in Meilisearch instantly.
• Hot-Reloading: Change your search settings on the fly. No need to restart your server when adding new collections or changing filters.
• Smart Array Handling: Option to preserve JSON arrays (like tags or ingredients list) for better faceting and filtering.
• Zero-Config Setup: Automatically creates the necessary settings collection in your Directus Admin Panel.
• Manual Reindexing: Trigger a full reindex via the Admin Panel UI, CLI, or API.

🚀 Getting Started

1. Installation

Install the extension in your Directus project.

npm install directus-extension-meilisearch-connector
# or
pnpm add directus-extension-meilisearch-connector

2. Configuration

Once installed and Directus is running, navigate to the Content module. You will see a new collection called "Meilisearch Settings".

1. Host: Enter your Meilisearch URL (e.g., http://localhost:7700 or http://meilisearch:7700 if using Docker/Podman).
2. API Key: Enter your Meilisearch Master Key.
3. Collections Configuration: Define which collections to index using JSON.

3. Example Configuration

In the Collections Configuration field, add your rules:

[
  {
    "collection": "recipes",
    "fields": ["id", "title", "description", "ingredients"],
    "queryFilter": { "status": { "_eq": "published" } },
    "actionFilter": { "status": { "_eq": "published" } },
    "preserveArrays": true
  }
]

• fields: List of Directus fields to send to Meilisearch.
• queryFilter: (Optional) Filter items during the initial reindex (e.g., only published items).
• actionFilter: (Optional) Filter items during real-time updates.
• preserveArrays: Set to true to keep lists (like tags) as arrays. If false (default), they are flattened.

🔄 Reindexing Data

If you have existing data, you can sync it all at once using one of these methods:

• Admin Panel (Easiest): In the Meilisearch Settings item, toggle the "Start Reindexing" switch to ON and save. It will run in the background and turn itself off when done.
• API: Send a POST request to /meilisearch/reindex (requires Admin Token).
• CLI: Run npx directus meilisearch:reindex in your server terminal.

👏 Credits

This project is an improved version of the directus-extension-meilisearch-integration by Healios.

Major improvements in this version:

• Eliminated the need to restart the server when changing settings.
• Added an API Endpoint and UI Toggle for reindexing.
• Added support for preserving array structures.
• Improved error handling and system stability.