Full-Text Search With Postgres
Implement real search functionality using PostgreSQL's built-in tsvector, tsquery, and search indexes — no Elasticsearch required.
14 min readdatabases, postgres, full-text-search, tsvector, search
Users expect search to work. They type "javascript beginner tutorial" into a search box and expect to find relevant results — even if the exact phrase doesn't appear anywhere. They expect "running" to match "run" and "ran." They expect results ranked by relevance, not alphabetical order.
You could add Elasticsearch to your stack. Or you could use what PostgreSQL already has built in: a full-text search engine that handles most use cases without any additional infrastructure.
Why Not Just Use LIKE?
The naive approach to search:
SELECT * FROM articles WHERE title LIKE '%javascript%';This has serious problems:
- No index usage. A leading wildcard (
%javascript) forces a sequential scan on every row. - No language awareness. "running" won't match "run." "JavaSc
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