Concepts / Building Search UI / Installation
May. 16, 2019

Installation

Installing React InstantSearch

React InstantSearch can be used either with a packaging system or with a direct link in your webpage.

With a build system

If you have a JavaScript build system, you can install React InstantSearch from npm:

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npm install algoliasearch react-instantsearch-dom

Then in your module, you can load the main package:

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import algoliasearch from 'algoliasearch/lite';
import { InstantSearch, SearchBox, Hits } from 'react-instantsearch-dom';

const searchClient = algoliasearch('YourApplicationID', 'YourSearchOnlyAPIKey');

const App = () => (
  <InstantSearch searchClient={searchClient} indexName="demo_ecommerce">
    <SearchBox />
    <Hits />
  </InstantSearch>
);

The code examples on this page use the algoliasearch/lite client, which does not provide indexing methods. If you want to perform indexing operations, you have to import the regular algoliasearch client.

Directly in your page

This method uses a built version of React InstantSearch from the jsDelivr CDN:

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<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/react@16.8.4/umd/react.production.min.js" integrity="sha256-ctUamuIgSCQg1wsh8Iw0QbDXScmyXhjJ6lxYUscC3FA=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/react-dom@16.8.4/umd/react-dom.production.min.js" integrity="sha256-8uWWG/7CB3OS89Cw67+B++t6w0EMGfQE9C6OGps+Wd8=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/algoliasearch@3.33.0/dist/algoliasearchLite.min.js" integrity="sha256-3Laj91VXexjTlFLgL8+vvIq27laXdRmFIcO2miulgEs=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/react-instantsearch-dom@5.4.0/dist/umd/ReactInstantSearchDOM.min.js" integrity="sha256-vmWrOQPli9GZEos/tF1gMDQnKWu3bBPKmcHboTJSpuM=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

The jsDeliver CDN is highly available with over 110 locations in the world.

You will then have access to the ReactInstantSearchDOM object in the global scope (window).

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const { InstantSearch, SearchBox, Hits } = ReactInstantSearchDOM;

const searchClient = algoliasearch('YourApplicationID', 'YourSearchOnlyAPIKey');

const App = () => (
  <InstantSearch searchClient={searchClient} indexName="demo_ecommerce">
    <SearchBox />
    <Hits />
  </InstantSearch>
);

Load the style

Afterwards, you need to manually load the companion CSS file into your page:

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<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/instantsearch.css@7.3.1/themes/reset-min.css" integrity="sha256-t2ATOGCtAIZNnzER679jwcFcKYfLlw01gli6F6oszk8=" crossorigin="anonymous">

Or you can load into your page the Algolia theme for the widgets to be styled.

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<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/instantsearch.css@7.3.1/themes/algolia-min.css" integrity="sha256-HB49n/BZjuqiCtQQf49OdZn63XuKFaxcIHWf0HNKte8=" crossorigin="anonymous">

You can find more information about that in the styling guide.

Create InstantSearch App

You can use create-instantsearch-app. Similarly to other interactive command line applications, you can run it either with npm or with yarn:

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npx create-instantsearch-app 'getting-started'
# or
yarn create instantsearch-app 'getting-started'

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