README

The problem

Flarum's built-in search runs on your database. It misses typos, and MySQL's full-text mode drops common words. Elasticsearch, OpenSearch and Typesense fix that, but they need a lot of memory, which is a problem on a small VPS or shared server.

What it does

A free search driver for Flarum 2, backed by Manticore Search, the maintained successor to Sphinx. Measured on a test forum, the official container used about 30 MB at start and about 100 MB once typo-tolerant searches were running (fuzzy search is handled by Manticore's small Buddy helper).

Typo tolerance. meetp finds meetup. This uses Manticore's fuzzy search (7.0 and later). On older servers it falls back to prefix matching.
Discussions, posts and users, each switched on separately.
Flarum still decides who sees what. Manticore only returns ids in ranked order. Flarum loads the results through its usual visibility rules, so private discussions, hidden or unapproved posts and restricted tags stay hidden, and tag filters still work.
Light on the forum. It talks to Manticore's HTTP API through the Guzzle client Flarum already ships, so it needs no pdo_mysql and runs on MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite forums alike. A search adds one database query, however many results come back. Text is indexed but not stored, so Manticore keeps no second copy of your posts. A reply writes one small row and never re-reads its thread.
Fails safe. Every call has a short timeout. If Manticore can't be reached, search falls back to Flarum's database search, and the outage is remembered for 30 seconds so later pages don't wait on it. A failed index write is logged and never stops anyone posting.

Installation

composer require ernestdefoe/manticore

Enable Manticore Search in the admin panel.

Run Manticore

The smallest setup is one container. Keep port 9308 private, because Manticore's HTTP API has no authentication of its own:

docker run -d --name manticore --restart unless-stopped \
  --memory 256m -p 127.0.0.1:9308:9308 \
  -v manticore-data:/var/lib/manticore \
  manticoresearch/manticore

If your forum runs in Docker, attach Manticore to the forum's network instead of publishing a port, and use the container name as the host.

Set up

Admin → Manticore Search. Enter the host (and the port if it isn't 9308), then save.
Click Test connection.
Click Rebuild index, or run php flarum manticore:index.
Choose which searches Manticore should answer, then save.

The table prefix keeps two forums on one Manticore separate. If you leave it blank, it is taken from your forum's host name. Username and password are only needed when Manticore sits behind a proxy that uses HTTP basic authentication. The password stays on the server.

Search tabs answered by Manticore show a small Powered by Manticore Search note. The browser only learns which tabs use Manticore; it never sees connection details.

Console

php flarum manticore:index          # build or refresh every table
php flarum manticore:index --flush  # drop the tables

On a large forum, run a queue worker so indexing and rebuilds happen in the background.

How it indexes

Table	Holds	Used by
`<prefix>_discussions`	title	discussion search
`<prefix>_posts`	comment text and `discussion_id`	post search, and discussion search grouped by discussion
`<prefix>_users`	username and display name (never email)	user search

New, edited, hidden, restored and deleted content updates the index automatically. Hidden posts and discussions are removed from the index, the same way Flarum's search index pipeline treats them.

Updating

composer require ernestdefoe/manticore:^0.1
php flarum cache:clear

Support

Support forum: Manticore Search on ernestdefoe.online
Flarum community: Manticore Search on discuss.flarum.org
Bug reports: GitHub issues

ernestdefoe / manticore

Package info

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