v1.12.0-rc.2 🦗

What's Changed

• Fix index settings opt out by @ManyTheFish in #5101
• Update mini-dashboard to v0.2.16 version by @curquiza in #5102

Full Changelog: v1.12.0-rc.1...v1.12.0-rc.2

v1.12.0-rc.1 🦗

What's Changed

• Use the published crates versions by @Kerollmops in #5090
• Improve error handling when writing into LMDB by @Kerollmops in #5089
• Fix bugs for v1.12 by @ManyTheFish in #5062
• Precise spans for new indexer by @dureuill in #5092
• Settings opt out by @ManyTheFish in #5091
• Fix pagination when embedding fails by @dureuill in #5063
• Update charabia v0.9.2 by @ManyTheFish in #5098
• Span to measure the part of db writes that is after the merge/extraction by @dureuill in #5095

Full Changelog: v1.12.0-rc.0...v1.12.0-rc.1

v1.12.0-rc.0 🦗

Warning

Since this is a release candidate (RC), we do NOT recommend using it in a production environment. Is something not working as expected? We welcome bug reports and feedback about new features.

Meilisearch v1.12 introduces huge improvements regarding indexing speed. The team worked hard to divise time to import huge datasets by two. You can also customize your settings to adapt your indexing needs and so, the indexing speed that fits your usage.

New features and updates 🔥

Improve indexing speed

Indexing time for huge dataset import (multiple millions of documents) is divided by two!

Done by @dureuill, @ManyTheFish, and @Kerollmops in #4900.

More visibility around indexing tasks

In order to give more visibility around indexing processing around your task, especially when indexing big documents, new routes have been introduced:

• GET /batches/:uid: returns a specific batch object
• GET /batches: return a list of batch objects

The same query parameters than GET /tasks route can be used to apply filtering.

Also, a new field is introduced in the task object: batch.

Done by @irevoire in #5060, #5070, #5080

Other improvements

• Introduce the reverse query parameter for GET /tasks route set to false by default. If set to true, then the tasks will be returned in reversed order (the oldest first). Done by @irevoire in #5048.
• Make matches consider phrases as a single Match by @flevi29 in #4928
• Adds new metrics to prometheus by @PedroTurik in #5044
• Add indices field to _matchesPosition to specify where in an array a match comes from, by @LukasKalbertodt in #5005

Fixes 🐞

• Return an appropriate error when primary keys is greater than 512 bytes, by @flevi29 in #4930

Misc

• Dependencies updates
  • Update benchmarks to match the new crates subfolder by @Kerollmops in #5021
  • Fix the benchmarks by @irevoire in #5037
  • Bump Swatinem/rust-cache from 2.7.1 to 2.7.5 in #5030
• CIs and tests
  • Improve performance of delete_index.rs by @DerTimonius in #4963
  • Improve performance of create_index.rs by @DerTimonius in #4962
  • Improve performance of get_documents.rs by @PedroTurik in #5025
  • Improve performance of formatted.rs by @PedroTurik in #5043
  • Fix the path used in the flaky tests CI by @Kerollmops in #5049
• Misc
  • Rollback the Meilisearch Kawaii logo by @Kerollmops in #5017
  • Add image source label to Dockerfile by @wuast94 in #4990
  • Hide code complexity into a subfolder by @Kerollmops in #5016
  • Internal tool: implement offline upgrade from v1.10 to v1.11 by @irevoire in #5034

❤️ Thanks again to our external contributors:

• Meilisearch: @DerTimonius, @flevi29, @LukasKalbertodt, @PedroTurik, @wuast94
• Charabia

v1.11.3 🐿️

What's Changed

• For REST/OpenAI/ollama autoembedders users: Retry if deserialization of remote response failed by @dureuill in #5058

Full Changelog: v1.11.2...v1.11.3

v1.11.2 🐿️

What's Changed

• Add timeout on read and write operations. by @dureuill in #5051

Full Changelog: v1.11.1...v1.11.2

v1.11.1 🐿️

What's Changed

• Add 3s timeout to embedding requests made during search by @dureuill in #5039

Full Changelog: v1.11.0...v1.11.1

v1.11.0 🐿️

Meilisearch v1.11 introduces AI-powered search performance improvements thanks to binary quantization and various usage changes, all of which are steps towards a future stabilization of the feature. We have also improved federated search usage following user feedback.

🧰 All official Meilisearch integrations (including SDKs, clients, and other tools) are compatible with this Meilisearch release. Integration deployment happens between 4 to 48 hours after a new version becomes available.

Some SDKs might not include all new features. Consult the project repository for detailed information. Is a feature you need missing from your chosen SDK? Create an issue letting us know you need it, or, for open-source karma points, open a PR implementing it (we'll love you for that ❤️).

New features and updates 🔥

Experimental - AI-powered search improvements

This release is Meilisearch's first step towards stabilizing AI-powered search and introduces a few breaking changes to its API. Consult the PRD for full usage details.

Done by @dureuill in #4906, #4920, #4892, and #4938.

⚠️ Breaking changes

• When performing AI-powered searches, hybrid.embedder is now a mandatory parameter in GET and POST /indexes/{:indexUid}/search
• As a consequence, it is now mandatory to pass hybrid even for pure semantic searches
• embedder is now a mandatory parameter in GET and POST /indexes/{:indexUid}/similar
• Meilisearch now ignores semanticRatio and performs a pure semantic search for queries that include vector but not q

Addition & improvements

• The default model for OpenAI is now text-embedding-3-small instead of text-embedding-ada-002
• This release introduces a new embedder option: documentTemplateMaxBytes. Meilisearch will truncate a document's template text when it goes over the specified limit
• Fields in documentTemplate include a new field.is_searchable property. The default document template now filters out both empty fields and fields not in the searchable attributes list:

v1.11:

{% for field in fields %}
  {% if field.is_searchable and not field.value == nil %}
    {{ field.name }}: {{ field.value }}\n
  {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

v1.10:

{% for field in fields %}
  {{ field.name }}: {{ field.value }}\n
{% endfor %}

Embedders using the v1.10 document template will continue working as before. The new default document template will only work with newly created embedders.

Vector database indexing performance improvements

v1.11 introduces a new embedder option, binaryQuantized:

curl \
  -X PATCH 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/settings' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "embedders": {
      "image2text": {
        "binaryQuantized": true
      }
    }
  }'

Enable binary quantization to convert embeddings of floating point numbers into embeddings of boolean values. This will negatively impact the relevancy of AI-powered searches but significantly improve performance in large collections with more than 100 dimensions.

In our benchmarks, this reduced the size of the database by a factor of 10 and divided the indexing time by a factor of 6 with little impact on search times.

Warning

Enabling this feature will update all of your vectors to contain only 1s or -1s, significantly impacting relevancy.

You cannot revert this option once you enable it. Before setting binaryQuantized to true, Meilisearch recommends testing it in a smaller or duplicate index in a development environment.

Done by @irevoire in #4941.

Federated search improvements

Facet distribution and stats for federated searches

This release adds two new federated search options, facetsByIndex and mergeFacets. These allow you to request a federated search for facet distributions and stats data.

Facet information by index

To obtain facet distribution and stats for each separate index, use facetsByIndex when querying the POST /multi-search endpoint:

POST /multi-search
{
  "federation": {
    "limit": 20,
    "offset": 0,
	"facetsByIndex": {
	  "movies": ["title", "id"],
	  "comics": ["title"],
	}
  },
  "queries": [
    {
      "q": "Batman",
      "indexUid": "movies"
    },
    {
      "q": "Batman",
      "indexUid": "comics"
    }
  ]
}

The multi-search response will include a new field, facetsByIndex with facet data separated per index:

{
  "hits": […],
  …
  "facetsByIndex": {
      "movies": {
        "distribution": {
          "title": {
            "Batman returns": 1
          },
          "id": {
            "42": 1
          }
        },
        "stats": {
          "id": {
            "min": 42,
            "max": 42
          }
        }
      },
     …
  }
}

Merged facet information

To obtain facet distribution and stats for all indexes merged into a single, use both facetsByIndex and mergeFacets when querying the POST /multi-search endpoint:

POST /multi-search
{

  "federation": {
    "limit": 20,
    "offset": 0,
	  "facetsByIndex": {
	    "movies": ["title", "id"],
	    "comics": ["title"],
	  },
	  "mergeFacets": {
	    "maxValuesPerFacet": 10,
	  }
  }
  "queries": [
    {
      "q": "Batman",
      "indexUid": "movies"
    },
    {
      "q": "Batman",
      "indexUid": "comics"
    }
  ]
}

The response includes two new fields, facetDistribution and facetStarts:

{
  "hits": […],
  …
  "facetDistribution": {
    "title": {
      "Batman returns": 1
      "Batman: the killing joke":
    },
    "id": {
      "42": 1
    }
  },
  "facetStats": {
    "id": {
      "min": 42,
      "max": 42
    }
  }
}

Done by @dureuill in #4929.

Experimental — New STARTS WITH filter operator

Enable the experimental feature to use the STARTS WITH filter operator:

curl \
  -X PATCH 'http://localhost:7700/experimental-features/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "containsFilter": true
  }'

Use the STARTS WITH operator when filtering:

curl \
  -X POST http://localhost:7700/indexes/movies/search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "filter": "hero STARTS WITH spider"
  }'

🗣️ This is an experimental feature, and we need your help to improve it! Share your thoughts and feedback on this GitHub discussion.

Done by @Kerollmops in #4939.

Other improvements

• Language support and localizedAttributes settings by @ManyTheFish in #4937
  • Add ISO-639-1 variants
  • Convert ISO-639-1 into ISO-639-3
• Add a German language tokenizer by @luflow in meilisearch/charabia#303 and in #4945
• Improve Turkish language support by @tkhshtsh0917 in meilisearch/charabia#305 and in #4957
• Upgrade "batch failed" log to error level in #4955 by @dureuill.
• Update the search UI: remove the forced capitalized fields, by @curquiza in #4993

Fixes 🐞

• ⚠️ When using federated search, query.facets was silently ignored at the query level, but should not have been. It now returns the appropriate error. Use federation.facetsByIndex instead if you want facets to be applied during federated search.
• Prometheus /metrics return the route pattern instead of the real route when returning the HTTP requests total by @irevoire in #4839
• Truncate values at the end of a list of facet values when the number of facet values is larger than maxValuesPerFacet. For example, setting maxValuesPerFacet to 2 could result in ["blue", "red", "yellow"], being truncated to ["blue", "yellow"] instead of ["blue", "red"]`. By @dureuill in #4929
• Improve the task cancellation when vectors are used, by @irevoire in #4971
• Swedish support: the characters å, ä, ö are no longer normalized to a and o. By @ManyTheFish in #4945
• Update rhai to fix an internal error when updating documents with a function (experimental) by @irevoire in #4960
• Fix the bad experimental search queue size by @irevoire in #4992
• Do not send empty edit document by function by @irevoire in #5001
• Display vectors when no custom vectors were ever provided by @dureuill in #5008

Misc

• Dependencies updates
  • Security dependency upgrade: bump quinn-proto from 0.11.3 to 0.11.8 by @dependabot in #4911
• CIs and tests
  • Make the tests run faster by @irevoire in #4808
• Documentation
  • Fix broken links in README by @iornstein in #4943
• Misc
  • Allow Meilitool to upgrade from v1.9 to v1.10 without a dump in some conditions, by @dureuill in #4912
  • Fix bench by adding embedder by @dureuill in #4954
  • Revamp analytics by @irevoire in #5011

❤️ Thanks again to our external contributors:

• Meilisearch: @iornstein.
• Charabia: @luflow, @tkhshtsh0917.

v1.11.0-rc.3 🐿️

Warning

Since this is a release candidate (RC), we do NOT recommend using it in a production environment. Is something not working as expected? We welcome bug reports and feedback about new features.

Maintenance

• Revamp analytics by @irevoire in #5011

v1.11.0-rc.2 🐿️

Warning

Since this is a release candidate (RC), we do NOT recommend using it in a production environment. Is something not working as expected? We welcome bug reports and feedback about new features.

Bugs Fixes

• fix the bad experimental search queue size by @irevoire in #4992
• Do not send empty edit document by function by @irevoire in #5001
• Display vectors when no custom vectors were ever provided by @dureuill in #5008

Experimental Features

• Bring back changes from v1.10.3 by @irevoire in #5006

See the release note of the v1.10.3 for more information about the two experimental cli flags that are being introduced in this RC.

Misc

• Update mini-dashboard by @curquiza in #4993

Full Changelog: v1.11.0-rc.1...v1.11.0-rc.2

v1.10.3 🦩

Search improvements

This PR lets you configure two behaviors of the engine through experimental cli flags:

• The number of searches Meilisearch can process concurrently per core with the --experimental-nb-searches-per-core cli flag
• After how many seconds Meilisearch can consider a search as irrelevant and drop it straight away without processing it with the --experimental-drop-search-after cli flag

Done by @irevoire in #5000

Full Changelog: v1.10.2...v1.10.3