Algolia Search API Client for C#

Algolia Search is a hosted full-text, numerical, and faceted search engine capable of delivering realtime results from the first keystroke. The Algolia Search API Client for C# lets you easily use the Algolia Search REST API from your C# code.

API Documentation

You can find the full reference on Algolia's website.

Table of Contents

1. Supported platforms

2. Install

3. Quick Start

   • Initialize the client
   • Push data
   • Search
   • Configure
   • Frontend search

4. Getting Help

Getting Started

Supported platforms

Compatible with .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, ASP.NET vNext 1.0, Mono 4.5, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1, Xamarin iOS, and Xamarin Android.

Install

1. In you project, open the "Package Manager Console" (Tools → Library Package Manager → Package Manager Console)
2. Enter Install-Package Algolia.Search in the Package Manager Console

Quick Start

In 30 seconds, this quick start tutorial will show you how to index and search objects.

Initialize the client

You first need to initialize the client. For that you need your Application ID and API Key. You can find both of them on your Algolia account.

AlgoliaClient client = new AlgoliaClient("YourApplicationID", "YourAPIKey")

Push data

Without any prior configuration, you can start indexing 500 contacts in the contacts index using the following code:

// Load JSON file
StreamReader re = File.OpenText("contacts.json");
JsonTextReader reader = new JsonTextReader(re);
JArray batch = JArray.Load(reader);
// Add objects
Index index = client.InitIndex("contacts");
index.AddObjects(batch);
// Asynchronous
// await index.AddObjectsAsync(batch);

Search

You can now search for contacts using firstname, lastname, company, etc. (even with typos):

// search by firstname
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(index.Search(new Query("jimmie")));
// Asynchronous
// System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(await index.SearchAsync(new Query("jimmie")));
// search a firstname with typo
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(index.Search(new Query("jimie")));
// Asynchronous
// System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(await index.SearchAsync(new Query("jimie")));
// search for a company
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(index.Search(new Query("california paint")));
// Asynchronous
// System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(await index.SearchAsync(new Query("california paint")));
// search for a firstname & company
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(index.Search(new Query("jimmie paint")));
// Asynchronous
// System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(await index.SearchAsync(new Query("jimmie paint")));

Configure

Settings can be customized to tune the search behavior. For example, you can add a custom sort by number of followers to the already great built-in relevance:

index.SetSettings(JObject.Parse(@"{""customRanking"":[""desc(followers)""]}"));
// Asynchronous
// await index.SetSettingsAsync(JObject.Parse(@"{""customRanking"":[""desc(followers)""]}"));

You can also configure the list of attributes you want to index by order of importance (first = most important):

Note: Since the engine is designed to suggest results as you type, you'll generally search by prefix. In this case the order of attributes is very important to decide which hit is the best:

index.SetSettings(JObject.Parse(@"{""searchableAttributes"":[""lastname"", ""firstname"",
                                                          ""company"", ""email"", ""city""]}"));
// Asynchronous
//await index.SetSettingsAsync(JObject.Parse(@"{""searchableAttributes"":[""lastname"", ""firstname"",
//                                                                     ""company"", ""email"", ""city""]}"));

Frontend search

Note: If you are building a web application, you may be more interested in using our JavaScript client to perform queries.

It brings two benefits:

• Your users get a better response time by not going through your servers
• It will offload unnecessary tasks from your servers

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/algoliasearch/3/algoliasearch.min.js"></script>
<script>
var client = algoliasearch('ApplicationID', 'apiKey');
var index = client.initIndex('indexName');

// perform query "jim"
index.search('jim', searchCallback);

// the last optional argument can be used to add search parameters
index.search(
  'jim', {
    hitsPerPage: 5,
    facets: '*',
    maxValuesPerFacet: 10
  },
  searchCallback
);

function searchCallback(err, content) {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
    return;
  }

  console.log(content);
}
</script>

Getting Help

• Need help? Ask a question to the Algolia Community or on Stack Overflow.
• Found a bug? You can open a GitHub issue.