Meilisearch + Mini Dashboard

beginner

Lightning fast search engine with typo tolerance.

Overview

Meilisearch is an open-source search engine built in Rust that delivers sub-50ms search responses with built-in typo tolerance and zero-configuration setup. Originally developed by the French company Meili, it emerged as a developer-friendly alternative to complex solutions like Elasticsearch, focusing on instant search experiences without the operational overhead. Unlike traditional search engines that require extensive configuration and tuning, Meilisearch works intelligently out of the box with features like automatic typo correction, relevance ranking, and faceted search. This stack combines the core Meilisearch engine with the riccoxie/meilisearch-ui dashboard, creating a complete search solution with visual management capabilities. The dashboard provides an intuitive interface for index management, document browsing, search testing, and analytics visualization, while Meilisearch handles the high-performance search operations through its RESTful API. The two components communicate over a dedicated Docker network, with the dashboard automatically connecting to the Meilisearch instance. This combination is ideal for developers and organizations who need powerful search capabilities without the complexity of enterprise solutions. Startups building e-commerce platforms, content sites, or applications requiring instant search will benefit from Meilisearch's simplicity and performance, while the dashboard makes it accessible to non-technical team members for content management and search optimization.

Key Features

Sub-50ms search responses with built-in performance optimization
Automatic typo tolerance with intelligent correction algorithms
Faceted search and filtering with customizable attributes
Visual dashboard for index management and search analytics
Highlighting and snippet generation for search results
Custom ranking rules with attribute-based relevance tuning
Multi-tenancy support with API key-based access control
RESTful API with comprehensive search and indexing endpoints

Common Use Cases

1E-commerce product catalogs with instant search and filtering
2Documentation sites requiring fast content discovery
3Content management systems with full-text search capabilities
4Small to medium-scale applications needing typo-tolerant search
5Development environments for testing search implementations
6Internal knowledge bases and company wikis
7Educational platforms with course and content search functionality

Prerequisites

Minimum 256MB RAM available (1GB+ recommended for production)
Docker and Docker Compose installed on the host system
Ports 7700 and 24900 available on the host machine
Basic understanding of REST APIs for Meilisearch integration
MASTER_KEY environment variable configured for production security

For development & testing. Review security settings, change default credentials, and test thoroughly before production use. See Terms

docker-compose.yml

1services: 
2  meilisearch: 
3    image: getmeili/meilisearch:latest
4    environment: 
5      - MEILI_MASTER_KEY=${MASTER_KEY}
6      - MEILI_ENV=production
7      - MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS=true
8    volumes: 
9      - meilisearch-data:/meili_data
10    ports: 
11      - "7700:7700"
12    networks: 
13      - meilisearch-network
14    restart: unless-stopped
15
16  dashboard: 
17    image: riccoxie/meilisearch-ui:latest
18    environment: 
19      - MEILI_HOST=http://meilisearch:7700
20    ports: 
21      - "24900:24900"
22    depends_on: 
23      - meilisearch
24    networks: 
25      - meilisearch-network
26    restart: unless-stopped
27
28volumes: 
29  meilisearch-data: 
30
31networks: 
32  meilisearch-network: 
33    driver: bridge

.env Template

.env

1# Meilisearch
2MASTER_KEY=your-master-key-at-least-16-chars
3
4# Generate key: openssl rand -base64 32

Usage Notes

1API at http://localhost:7700
2Dashboard at http://localhost:24900
3Typo tolerance built-in
4Faceted search
5RESTful API

Individual Services(2 services)

Copy individual services to mix and match with your existing compose files.

meilisearch

meilisearch:
  image: getmeili/meilisearch:latest
  environment:
    - MEILI_MASTER_KEY=${MASTER_KEY}
    - MEILI_ENV=production
    - MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS=true
  volumes:
    - meilisearch-data:/meili_data
  ports:
    - "7700:7700"
  networks:
    - meilisearch-network
  restart: unless-stopped

dashboard

dashboard:
  image: riccoxie/meilisearch-ui:latest
  environment:
    - MEILI_HOST=http://meilisearch:7700
  ports:
    - "24900:24900"
  depends_on:
    - meilisearch
  networks:
    - meilisearch-network
  restart: unless-stopped

Quick Start

terminal

1# 1. Create the compose file
2cat > docker-compose.yml << 'EOF'
3services:
4  meilisearch:
5    image: getmeili/meilisearch:latest
6    environment:
7      - MEILI_MASTER_KEY=${MASTER_KEY}
8      - MEILI_ENV=production
9      - MEILI_NO_ANALYTICS=true
10    volumes:
11      - meilisearch-data:/meili_data
12    ports:
13      - "7700:7700"
14    networks:
15      - meilisearch-network
16    restart: unless-stopped
17
18  dashboard:
19    image: riccoxie/meilisearch-ui:latest
20    environment:
21      - MEILI_HOST=http://meilisearch:7700
22    ports:
23      - "24900:24900"
24    depends_on:
25      - meilisearch
26    networks:
27      - meilisearch-network
28    restart: unless-stopped
29
30volumes:
31  meilisearch-data:
32
33networks:
34  meilisearch-network:
35    driver: bridge
36EOF
37
38# 2. Create the .env file
39cat > .env << 'EOF'
40# Meilisearch
41MASTER_KEY=your-master-key-at-least-16-chars
42
43# Generate key: openssl rand -base64 32
44EOF
45
46# 3. Start the services
47docker compose up -d
48
49# 4. View logs
50docker compose logs -f

One-Liner

Run this command to download and set up the recipe in one step:

terminal

1curl -fsSL https://docker.recipes/api/recipes/meilisearch-complete/run | bash

Troubleshooting

Dashboard shows connection error: Verify the MEILI_HOST environment variable points to http://meilisearch:7700 and both containers are on the same network
Meilisearch returns 401 Unauthorized: Ensure the MASTER_KEY environment variable is set and API requests include the correct Authorization header
Search queries return empty results: Check that documents are properly indexed and searchable attributes are configured correctly through the API
Container fails to start with permission errors: Verify the meilisearch-data volume has proper write permissions and sufficient disk space
Dashboard interface not loading: Confirm port 24900 is not blocked by firewall and the dashboard container has successfully started after meilisearch

Community Notes

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Includes docker-compose.yml, .env template, README, and license

Components

meilisearchmeilisearch-dashboard

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