Setting Up Decoupled Faceted Search in Drupal with Typesense and InstantSearch

Colorfield published a blog post by Christophe Jossart exploring how to set up a decoupled faceted search system using Typesense, Algolia InstantSearch, and Drupal Search API. Typesense, an open-source alternative to Algolia, offers a different pricing model based on infrastructure usage rather than query count and supports both cloud and on-premise deployment. 

Christophe explains that Typesense is fast, written in C++, and skips Drupal Views by directly querying the server. The post details why an alternative to Drupal’s built-in facets was needed, citing performance issues, complex Solr setups, and caching challenges. A step-by-step guide walks readers through installing and configuring Typesense, setting up Drupal with Search API Typesense, and integrating a React frontend using InstantSearch widgets. A working example is provided, showing how to create an interactive search interface with filtering options. The post concludes with suggestions for embedding the solution in Drupal projects, either through soft decoupling or full decoupling.