Full-text search

Prisma Client supports full-text search for PostgreSQL databases in versions 2.30.0 and later, and MySQL databases in versions 3.8.0 and later. With full-text search (FTS) enabled, you can add search functionality to your application by searching for text within a database column.

info

In Prisma v6, FTS has been promoted to General Availability on MySQL. It still remains in Preview for PostgreSQL and requires using the fullTextSearchPostgres Preview feature flag.

Enabling full-text search for PostgreSQL

The full-text search API is currently a Preview feature. To enable this feature, carry out the following steps:

1. Update the previewFeatures block in your schema to include the fullTextSearchPostgres preview feature flag:

   schema.prisma

   generator client {
     provider        = "prisma-client-js"
     previewFeatures = ["fullTextSearchPostgres"]
   }

2. Generate Prisma Client:

   npx prisma generate

After you regenerate your client, a new search field will be available on any String fields created on your models. For example, the following search will return all posts that contain the word 'cat'.

// All posts that contain the word 'cat'.
const result = await prisma.posts.findMany({
  where: {
    body: {
      search: 'cat',
    },
  },
})

Note: There currently is a known issue in the full-text search feature for PostgreSQL. If you observe slow search queries, you can optimize your query with raw SQL.

Querying the database

The search field uses the database's native querying capabilities under the hood. This means that the exact query operators available are also database-specific.

PostgreSQL

The following examples demonstrate the use of the PostgreSQL 'and' (&) and 'or' (|) operators:

// All posts that contain the words 'cat' or 'dog'.
const result = await prisma.posts.findMany({
  where: {
    body: {
      search: 'cat | dog',
    },
  },
})

// All drafts that contain the words 'cat' and 'dog'.
const result = await prisma.posts.findMany({
  where: {
    status: 'Draft',
    body: {
      search: 'cat & dog',
    },
  },
})

To get a sense of how the query format works, consider the following text:

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

Here's how the following queries would match that text:

Query	Match?	Explanation
fox & dog	Yes	The text contains 'fox' and 'dog'
dog & fox	Yes	The text contains 'dog' and 'fox'
dog & cat	No	The text contains 'dog' but not 'cat'
!cat	Yes	'cat' is not in the text
fox | cat	Yes	The text contains 'fox' or 'cat'
cat | pig	No	The text doesn't contain 'cat' or 'pig'
fox <-> dog	Yes	'dog' follows 'fox' in the text
dog <-> fox	No	'fox' doesn't follow 'dog' in the text

For the full range of supported operations, see the PostgreSQL full text search documentation.

MySQL

The following examples demonstrate use of the MySQL 'and' (+) and 'not' (-) operators:

// All posts that contain the words 'cat' or 'dog'.
const result = await prisma.posts.findMany({
  where: {
    body: {
      search: 'cat dog',
    },
  },
})

// All posts that contain the words 'cat' and not 'dog'.
const result = await prisma.posts.findMany({
  where: {
    body: {
      search: '+cat -dog',
    },
  },
})

// All drafts that contain the words 'cat' and 'dog'.
const result = await prisma.posts.findMany({
  where: {
    status: 'Draft',
    body: {
      search: '+cat +dog',
    },
  },
})

To get a sense of how the query format works, consider the following text:

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

Here's how the following queries would match that text:

Query	Match?	Description
+fox +dog	Yes	The text contains 'fox' and 'dog'
+dog +fox	Yes	The text contains 'dog' and 'fox'
+dog -cat	Yes	The text contains 'dog' but not 'cat'
-cat	No	The minus operator cannot be used on its own (see note below)
fox dog	Yes	The text contains 'fox' or 'dog'
quic*	Yes	The text contains a word starting with 'quic'
quick fox @2	Yes	'fox' starts within a 2 word distance of 'quick'
fox dog @2	No	'dog' does not start within a 2 word distance of 'fox'
"jumps over"	Yes	The text contains the whole phrase 'jumps over'

Note: The - operator acts only to exclude rows that are otherwise matched by other search terms. Thus, a boolean-mode search that contains only terms preceded by - returns an empty result. It does not return “all rows except those containing any of the excluded terms.”

MySQL also has >, < and ~ operators for altering the ranking order of search results. As an example, consider the following two records:

1. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

2. "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy cat"

Query	Result	Description
fox ~cat	Return 1. first, then 2.	Return all records containing 'fox', but rank records containing 'cat' lower
fox (<cat >dog)	Return 1. first, then 2.	Return all records containing 'fox', but rank records containing 'cat' lower than rows containing 'dog'

For the full range of supported operations, see the MySQL full text search documentation.

Sorting results by _relevance

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Sorting by relevance is only available for PostgreSQL and MySQL.

In addition to Prisma Client's default orderBy behavior, full-text search also adds sorting by relevance to a given string or strings. As an example, if you wanted to order posts by their relevance to the term 'database' in their title, you could use the following:

const posts = await prisma.post.findMany({
  orderBy: {
    _relevance: {
      fields: ['title'],
      search: 'database',
      sort: 'asc'
    },
  },
})

Adding indexes

PostgreSQL

Prisma Client does not currently support using indexes to speed up full text search. There is an existing GitHub Issue for this.

MySQL

For MySQL, it is necessary to add indexes to any columns you search using the @@fulltext argument in the schema.prisma file.

In the following example, one full text index is added to the content field of the Blog model, and another is added to both the content and title fields together:

schema.prisma

generator client {
  provider        = "prisma-client-js"
}

model Blog {
  id      Int    @unique
  content String
  title   String

  @@fulltext([content])
  @@fulltext([content, title])
}

The first index allows searching the content field for occurrences of the word 'cat':

const result = await prisma.blogs.findMany({
  where: {
    content: {
      search: 'cat',
    },
  },
})

The second index allows searching both the content and title fields for occurrences of the word 'cat' in the content and 'food' in the title:

const result = await prisma.blogs.findMany({
  where: {
    content: {
      search: 'cat',
    },
    title: {
      search: 'food',
    },
  },
})

However, if you try to search on title alone, the search will fail with the error "Cannot find a fulltext index to use for the search" and the message code is P2030, because the search requires an index on both fields.

Full-text search with raw SQL

Full-text search is currently in Preview, and due to a known issue, you might experience slow search queries. If so, you can optimize your query using TypedSQL.

PostgreSQL

With TypedSQL, you can use PostgreSQL's to_tsvector and to_tsquery to express your search query.

fullTextSearch.sql

SELECT * FROM "Blog" WHERE to_tsvector('english', "Blog"."content") @@ to_tsquery('english', ${term});

index.ts

import { fullTextSearch } from "@prisma/client/sql"

const term = `cat`
const result = await prisma.$queryRawTyped(fullTextSearch(term))

Note: Depending on your language preferences, you may exchange english against another language in the SQL statement.

If you want to include a wildcard in your search term, you can do this as follows:

fullTextSearch.sql

SELECT * FROM "Blog" WHERE to_tsvector('english', "Blog"."content") @@ to_tsquery('english', ${term});

index.ts

const term = `cat:*`
const result = await prisma.$queryRawTyped(fullTextSearch(term))

MySQL

In MySQL, you can express your search query as follows:

fullTextSearch.sql

SELECT * FROM Blog WHERE MATCH(content) AGAINST(${term} IN NATURAL LANGUAGE MODE);

index.ts

const term = `cat`
const result = await prisma.$queryRawTyped(fullTextSearch(term))