​ Prerequisites

The official firestore-meilisearch extension automatically synchronizes documents from a Cloud Firestore collection to a Meilisearch index, enabling full-text search on your Firestore data.

Meilisearch Cloud is the easiest way to get a Meilisearch instance for use with Firebase.

​ Prerequisites

  • A Firebase project on the Blaze (pay-as-you-go) plan
  • Cloud Firestore set up in your Firebase project
  • A running Meilisearch instance (Cloud or self-hosted)
  • A Meilisearch API key with write permissions

​ Install the extension

You can install the extension using the Firebase Console or the Firebase CLI.

  • Firebase Console
  • Firebase CLI

Visit the Firebase Extensions Hub and click Install.Follow the prompts to select your Firebase project and configure the extension.

firebase ext:install meilisearch/firestore-meilisearch --project=YOUR_PROJECT_ID

Replace YOUR_PROJECT_ID with your Firebase project ID.

​ Configuration

During installation, you’ll configure the following parameters:

Parameter Description
Cloud Functions location Region where the extension’s functions will be deployed
Collection path The Firestore collection to sync (e.g., products, articles)
Fields to index Comma-separated list of field names, or leave blank to index all fields
Meilisearch index name The name of the Meilisearch index to sync data to
Meilisearch host Your Meilisearch instance URL (must start with http:// or https://)
Meilisearch API key An API key with permission to manage indexes

​ How it works

Once installed, the extension deploys a Cloud Function called indexingWorker that:

  1. Listens for document creates, updates, and deletions in your specified collection
  2. Syncs changes to your Meilisearch index in real-time
  3. Maps Firestore document IDs to a _firestore_id field in Meilisearch

The extension only monitors the specified collection, not subcollections. Install additional instances to sync other collections.

​ Data format

​ Document IDs

Firestore document IDs are automatically mapped to a _firestore_id field in Meilisearch. Any field named _firestore_id in your source documents will be ignored.

​ Geolocation

For geo search functionality, name your GeoPoint field _geo in Firestore. Meilisearch will automatically recognize it for geo search queries.

// Firestore document with geo data
{
  name: "Eiffel Tower",
  _geo: new firebase.firestore.GeoPoint(48.8584, 2.2945)
}

​ Import existing documents

The extension only syncs documents created or modified after installation. To import existing documents, use the provided import script:

npx @meilisearch/firestore-meilisearch-scripts import

See the for detailed instructions.

​ Search your data

Once your data is synced, you can search it using any Meilisearch SDK or the REST API:

  • JavaScript
  • cURL
import { Meilisearch } from 'meilisearch'

const client = new Meilisearch({
  host: process.env.MEILISEARCH_URL,
  apiKey: process.env.MEILISEARCH_KEY
})

const results = await client.index('products').search('phone')
console.log(results.hits)

curl "${MEILISEARCH_URL}/indexes/products/search" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${MEILISEARCH_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"q": "phone"}'

​ Resources