Implementing Search: PostgreSQL Full-Text vs Algolia vs Meilisearch

Search Is Harder Than It Looks LIKE '%query%' works until: Your table has 100k rows (Seq Scan, slow) Users misspell words (no fuzzy matching) Users search in different languages Users expect relevance ranking Then you need a real search solution. Option 1: PostgreSQL Full-Text Search Good enough for most apps. No extra infrastructure. -- Add a tsvector column for fast search ALTER TABLE posts ADD COLUMN search_vector tsvector; -- Populate it UPDATE posts SET search_vector = to_tsvector('english', coalesce(title, '') || ' ' || coalesce(content, '') || ' ' || coalesce(tags::text, '') ); -- Keep it updated automatically CREATE FUNCTION update_search_vector() RETURNS trigger AS $ BEGIN NEW.search_vector := to_tsvector('english', coalesce(NEW.title, '') || ' ' || coalesce(NEW.content, '') ); RETURN NEW; END; $ LANGUAGE plpgsql; CREATE TRIGGER posts_search_vector_update BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE ON posts FOR EACH ROW EXECUTE FUNCTION update_search_vector(); -- GIN index for fast search CREAT