Meilisearch v1.8 introduces new changes and optimizations related to the Hybrid search with the addition of new models and embedders like REST embedders and the Ollama model. This version also focuses on stability by adding more security around the search requests. Finally, we introduce the negative operator to exclude specific terms from a search query.
🧰 All official Meilisearch integrations (including SDKs, clients, and other tools) are compatible with this Meilisearch release. Integration deployment happens between 4 to 48 hours after a new version becomes available.
Some SDKs might not include all new features. Consult the project repository for detailed information. Is a feature you need missing from your chosen SDK? Create an issue letting us know you need it, or, for open-source karma points, open a PR implementing it (we'll love you for that ❤️).
This release introduces a few changes to hybrid search.): a new distribution
embedder setting, support for two new embedder sources, and breaking changes to hybrid and semantic search ranking score.
🗣️ This is an experimental feature and we need your help to improve it! Share your thoughts and feedback on this GitHub discussion.
Done by @dureuill and @jakobklemm in #4456, #4537, #4509, #4548, #4549.
To increase search response times and reduce bandwidth usage:
- Meilisearch no longer returns the
vector
field will in the search response - Meilisearch no longer returns the
_semanticScore
in the search response. Use_rankingScore
in its place - Meilisearch no longer displays the query vector and its value when
"showRankingScoreDetails": true
Ollama is a framework for building and running language models locally. Configure it by supplying an embedder object to the /settings
endpoint:
"default": {
"source": "ollama",
"url": "http://localhost:11434/api/embeddings", // optional, fetched from MEILI_OLLAMA_URL environment variable if missing
"apiKey": "<foobarbaz>", // optional
"model": "nomic-embed-text",
"documentTemplate": "A document titled '{{doc.title}}' whose description starts with {{doc.overview|truncatewords: 20}}"
}
Meilisearch now also supports any embedder with a RESTful interface. Configure it by supplying an embedder object to the /settings
endpoint:
"default": {
"source": "rest",
"url": "http://localhost:12345/api/v1/embed", //Mandatory, full URL to the embedding endpoint
"apiKey": "187HFLDH97CNHN", // Optional, passed as Bearer in the Authorization header
"dimensions": 512, // Optional, inferred with a dummy request if missing
"documentTemplate": "A document titled '{{doc.title}}' whose description starts with {{doc.overview|truncatewords: 20}}"
"inputField": ["data", "text"], // Optional, defaults to []
"inputType": "text", // Optional, either "text" or "textArray", defaults to text
"query": { // Optional, defaults to {}
"model": "MODEL_NAME",
"dimensions": 512
},
"pathToEmbeddings": ["data"], // Optional, defaults to []
"embeddingObject": ["embedding"] // Optional, defaults to []
}
Use distribution
to apply an affine transformation to the _rankingScore
of semantic search results. This can help to compare _rankingScore
s of semantic and keyword search results and improve result ranking.
"default": {
"source": "huggingFace",
"model": "MODEL_NAME",
"distribution": { // describes the natural distribution of results
"mean": 0.7, // mean value
"sigma": 0.3 // variance
}
}
- Hide the API key in settings and task queue (#4533) @dureuill
- Return keyword search results even in case of a failure of the embedding when performing hybrid searches (#4548) @dureuill
- For hybrid or semantic search requests, add a
semanticHitCount
field at the top of the search response indicating the number of hits originating from the semantic search (#4548) @dureuill
Search queries can now contain a negative keyword to exclude terms from the search. Use the -
operator in front of a word or a phrase to make sure no document that contains those words are shown in the results:
curl \
-X POST 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/places/search' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-binary '{ "q": "-escape room" }'
-escape
returns any document that does not containescape
-escape room
returns documents containingroom
but notescape
-"on demand"
returns any document that does not contain"on demand"
Done by @Kerollmops in #4535.
To avoid crashes and performance issues, Meilisearch now interrupts search requests that take more than 1500ms to complete.
Use the /settings
endpoint to customize this value:
curl \
-X PATCH 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/settings' \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-binary '{
"searchCutoffMs": 150
}'
The default value of the searchCutoffMs
setting is null
and corresponds to a 1500ms timeout.
Done by @irevoire in #4466.
This release introduces a limit for concurrent search requests to prevent Meilisearch from consuming an unbounded amount of RAM and crashing.
The default number of requests in the queue is 1000. Relaunch your self-hosted instance with --experimental-search-queue-size
to change this limit:
./meilisearch --experimental-search-queue-size 100
👉 This limit does NOT impact the search performance. It only affects the number of enqueued search requests to prevent security issues.
🗣️ This is an experimental feature and we need your help to improve it! Share your thoughts and feedback on this GitHub discussion.
Done by @irevoire in #4536
- Increase indexing speed when updating settings (#4504) @ManyTheFish
- Update search logs: do not display
hits
in the search output for DEBUG log level (#4580) @irevoire - The
sortFacetValuesBy
setting now impacts the/facet-search
route (#4476) @Kerollmops - Prometheus experimental feature: add
status
code label to the HTTP request counter (#4373) @rohankmr414 - Tokenizer improvements by bumping charabia to 0.8.8 (#4511) @6543
- Support markdown formatted code blocks
- Improve Korean segmentation to correctly use the context ID registered in the dictionary
- Add
\t
as recognized separator - Make the pinyin-normalization optional - this can be reactivated by enabling the
chinese-normalization-pinyin
feature
- Fix crash when putting empty separator (#4574) @ManyTheFish
- Stop crashing when panic occurs in thread pool (#4593) @Kerollmops
- Always show facet numbers in alpha order in the facet distribution (#4581) @Kerollmops
- Prometheus experimental feature: fix the HTTP request duration histogram bucket boundaries to follow the OpenTelemetry spec (#4530) @rohankmr414
- Hybrid search experimental feature: fix an error on Windows when generating embeddings (#4549) @dureuill
- Dependency updates
- Bump mio from 0.8.9 to 0.8.11 (#4457)
- Upgrade rustls to 0.21.10 and ring to 0.17 (#4400) @hack3ric
- CIs and tests
- Add automation to create openAPI issues (#4520) @curquiza
- Add tests to check when the field limit is reached (#4463) @irevoire
- Allow running benchmarks without sending results to the dashboard (#4475) @dureuill
- Create automation when creating GitHub milestones to create update-version issue (#4416) @curquiza
- Fix reason param when benches are triggered from a comment (#4483) @dureuill
- Documentation
- Fix milli link in contributing doc (#4499) @mohsen-alizadeh
- Fix some typos in comments (#4546) @redistay
- Remove repetitive words in Benchmark docs (#4526) @availhang
- Remove repetitive words in code-base comments (#4491) @shuangcui
- Update sprint_issue.md (#4516) @curquiza
- Add documentation for benchmarks (#4477) @dureuill
- Fix typos (#4542) @brunoocasali
- Misc
- Update cargo version (#4474) @curquiza
- Remove useless analytics (#4578) @irevoire
- Fix milli/Cargo.toml for usage as dependency via git (#4547) @Toromyx
❤️ Thanks again to our external contributors:
- Meilisearch: @availhang, @hack3ric, @jakobklemm, @mohsen-alizadeh, @redistay, @rohankmr414, @shuangcui, @Toromyx, @6543.
- Charabia: @Gusted, @mosuka, @6543