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Full-Text Search

Tables declare what is searchable. Three field-level properties control how a field participates in search: indexed makes it queryable, searchWeight ranks its relevance, and fullTextSearch (on rich-text) enables FTS indexing for formatted content. Components then pick the engine that consumes these — see search-overview.

Field properties

Property Applies to Description
indexed All field types Boolean. Creates a database index on the field. Required for fts, trigram, and hybrid engines.
searchWeight All field types A–D. PostgreSQL FTS relevance weight. Only effective when indexed: true and the engine is fts or hybrid.
fullTextSearch rich-text Boolean. Enables full-text-search indexing for the field's formatted content.

These extend the base field properties shared by every field type.

Field relevance weights

searchWeight maps directly to PostgreSQL FTS weights, ordering how strongly a match in each field influences the relevance rank. A title match outranks a body match.

Weight Relevance Typical fields
A Highest Title, name, headline.
B High Description, summary, excerpt.
C Medium Tags, categories, labels.
D Lowest Internal notes, metadata, footnotes. 
tables:
  - name: articles
    fields:
      - { id: 1, name: title, type: single-line-text, indexed: true, searchWeight: A }
      - { id: 2, name: summary, type: long-text, indexed: true, searchWeight: B }
      - { id: 3, name: tags, type: single-line-text, indexed: true, searchWeight: C }
      - { id: 4, name: body, type: rich-text, indexed: true, fullTextSearch: true, searchWeight: B }

fullTextSearch on rich text

The rich-text field stores formatted HTML. Setting fullTextSearch: true enables full-text-search indexing of its text content so the field can participate in fts/hybrid queries alongside plain-text fields.

- id: 5
  name: article_content
  type: rich-text
  required: true
  maxLength: 10000
  fullTextSearch: true
  searchWeight: B
  toolbar: [bold, italic, link, heading, list]

Plain long-text and single-line-text fields do not need fullTextSearch — set indexed: true and a searchWeight, and they are FTS-ready. The fullTextSearch flag exists specifically for rich-text because its stored value is HTML markup rather than plain text. See text-fields for the full rich-text property set.

PostgreSQL vs SQLite

Aspect PostgreSQL SQLite
FTS engine Native tsvector/tsquery with weighted ranking. Simpler matching; weighted ranking is reduced.
Fuzzy matching pg_trgm extension (trigram, typo-tolerant). Not available — trigram engine targets Postgres.
searchWeight A–D Fully honored in relevance ranking. Best-effort; weight ordering may be approximate.
Recommendation Use for index-backed fts/trigram/hybrid search. Zero-config default; design ranked search on Postgres.

Trigram fuzzy matching

The pg_trgm extension breaks text into three-character sequences (trigrams) and matches on overlap, tolerating typos and partial words. This powers the trigram and hybrid engines. A field used for fuzzy search should be indexed: true so PostgreSQL can build a trigram (GIN/GiST) index.

tables:
  - name: products
    fields:
      - { id: 1, name: name, type: single-line-text, indexed: true, searchWeight: A }
# Component side — fuzzy matching on the indexed field
- type: data-table
  dataSource:
    table: products
    mode: search
    searchFields: [name]
    searchEngine: trigram

A query of prodct still matches product; lapto matches laptop. Pair trigram with FTS using searchEngine: 'hybrid' to keep relevance ranking for exact terms while retaining typo tolerance for the rest.

  • Search Overview — the four search engines and the search data-source mode.
  • Search Components — searchInput, list, pageSearch, and toolbar search.
  • Text Fields — rich-text, long-text, and the fullTextSearch flag.
  • Tables Overview — indexed, searchWeight, and other base field properties.