In this video, I will show you how to install and enable the Search API module.

Install Modules

Enable Modules

  • Go to "Modules" (admin/modules) and enable:
    • Entity API
    • Search API
  • (Save Configuration)

Now that we have installed and enabled the Search API module, we need to go to the Search API configuration page.

  • Go to "Configuration = > Search and Metadata => Search API" (admin/config/search/search_api)

When configuring Search API, you'll find yourself coming back to this page time and time again. Every time we install a module that adds functionality to Search API, we'll come back here to configure it. Right now, we can create a new search server by clicking the "Add server" link or create a new search index by clicking the "Add index" link. A complete setup will include both a search server and a search index.

The first thing that we need when setting up Search API is the search server. A search server defines how and where the index will be stored and retrieved. But before we can actually create a server, we will need to have a service class. Service class identifies the type of server backend used for a server. It simply specifies how data is indexed and searched. There are several modules that provide service classes that use databases, Solr servers, etc. for indexing and searching data. In the next video, I will show you how to set up the Search API Database Search module that uses a database to index data.