Autosuggest
Generate autocomplete suggestions based on what your users search
:tangerine: Battle-tested at Instacart
Installation
Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:
gem 'autosuggest'
How It Works
Start with the most popular queries
top_queries = Search.group("LOWER(query)")
.having("COUNT(DISTINCT user_id) >= 5")
.count("DISTINCT user_id")
# {"bananas" => 353, "apples" => 213, ...
autosuggest = Autosuggest.new(top_queries)
Filter duplicates
Stemming is used to detect duplicates like apple
and apples
.
The most popular query is preferred by default. To override this, use:
autosuggest.prefer ["apples"]
To fix false positives, use:
autosuggest.not_duplicates [["straws", "straus"]]
Filter misspellings
We tried open-source libraries like Aspell and Hunspell but quickly realized we needed to build a corpus specific to our application.
There are two ways to build the corpus, which can be used together.
- Add words
autosuggest.parse_words Product.pluck(:name)
Use the min
option to only add words that appear multiple times.
- Add concepts
autosuggest.add_concept "brand", Brand.pluck(:name)
Filter words
Profanity is blocked by default. Add custom words with:
autosuggest.block_words ["boom"]
Profit
Get suggestions with:
autosuggest.suggestions
Filter queries without results and you’re set. We also prefer to have someone manually approve them by hand.
Full Example
top_queries = Search.group("LOWER(query)")
.having("COUNT(DISTINCT user_id) >= 5")
.count("DISTINCT user_id")
product_names = Product.pluck(:name)
brand_names = Brand.pluck(:name)
autosuggest = Autosuggest.new(top_queries)
autosuggest.parse_words product_names
autosuggest.add_concept "brand", brand_names
autosuggest.prefer brand_names
autosuggest.not_duplicates [["straws", "straus"]]
autosuggest.block_words ["boom"]
puts autosuggest.pretty_suggestions
# or
suggestions = autosuggest.suggestions
History
View the changelog
Contributing
Everyone is encouraged to help improve this project. Here are a few ways you can help:
- Report bugs
- Fix bugs and submit pull requests
- Write, clarify, or fix documentation
- Suggest or add new features
To get started with development:
git clone https://github.com/ankane/autosuggest.git
cd autosuggest
bundle install
bundle exec rake test