Autocomplete / suggest as you type backend for search queries on product name, brands and categories

[stephanegigandet]

What

• We currently do not have an autocomplete feature for text search queries from the search box, where people can type product names, brands, categories. It would be great to provide one.
• We could try to make one from scratch (e.g. just using leading ngrams of product names / brands / categories), or we could try to use autocomplete features from other databases. e.g. ElasticSearch. MongoDB has autocomplete support only in the paid version (Atlas).
• e.g. https://medium.com/@mourjo_sen/a-detailed-comparison-between-autocompletion-strategies-in-elasticsearch-66cb9e9c62c4

Part of

• 5492

[stephanegigandet]

One option would be using postgres text indexes. e.g. https://github.com/Grinnz/cpan-meta-browser/blob/master/lib/CPANMetaBrowser/Plugin/Backend/Pg.pm#L163

[stephanegigandet]

Another option: https://www.meilisearch.com/

[teolemon]

Elastic Search

[M123-dev]

https://www.elastic.co/

[alexgarel]

New https://github.com/openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts-search/ project should tackle this…

[M123-dev]

@alexgarel what is the current status of off-search, when do you think it's ready to be tested

[alexgarel]

@M123-dev I'm working on deploying it to stagging, see https://github.com/openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts-search/pull/17

[M123-dev]

Perfect, then we can directly try it out in smoothie using dev mode

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