You can connect to Manticore Search using the HTTP protocol.

The HTTP protocol is by default available on port 9308.

In the searchd section of the configuration file the HTTP port can be defined with directive listen like this:

searchd {
...
   listen = 127.0.0.1:9308:http
...
}

There are no special requirements and any HTTP client can be used to connect to Manticore.

All endpoints respond with application/json content type. Most endpoints use JSON payload for requests, however there are some exceptions that use NDJSON or simple URL encoded payload.

There is no user authentication implemented at the moment, so make sure the HTTP interface is not reachable by anyone outside your network. Since Manticore acts like any other web server, you can use a reverse proxy like Nginx to add HTTP auth or caching.

The HTTP protocol also supports SSL encryption.

A separate HTTP interface can be used to perform 'VIP' connections. A connection to this port bypasses the thread pool and always forcibly creates a new dedicated thread. That's useful for managing in case of a severe overload when the server would either stall or not let you connect via a regular port.

searchd {
...
   listen = 127.0.0.1:9308:http
   listen = 127.0.0.1:9318:http_vip
...
}

The HTTP protocol also supports SSL encryption. In this case the connection type used will be https:

searchd {
...
   listen = 127.0.0.1:9308:http
   listen = 127.0.0.1:9443:https
...
}

Performing a quick search is as easy as:

POST /search 
    -d '{"index":"test","query":{"match":{"title":"keyword"}}}'

Endpoint /sql allows running an SQL SELECT query via HTTP JSON interface.

The query payload must be URL encoded, otherwise query statements with = (filtering or setting options) will result in an error.

POST /sql 
--data-urlencode "query=select id,subject,author_id  from forum where match('@subject php manticore') group by
author_id order by id desc limit 0,5"

The response is in JSON format and contains hits information and time of execution. The response shares the same format as json/search endpoint.

{
  "took":10
  "timed_out": false,
  "hits":
  {
    "total": 2,
    "hits":
    [
      {
        "_id": "1",
        "_score": 1,
        "_source": { "gid": 11 }
      },
      {
        "_id": "2",
        "_score": 1,
        "_source": { "gid": 12 }
      }
    ]
  }
}

For comfortable debugging in your browser you can set HTTP parameter mode to raw, and then the rest of the query after 'query=' will be passed inside without any substitutions/url decoding.

POST /sql -d "query=select id,packedfactors() from movies where match('star') option ranker=expr('1')"

{"error":"query missing"}

POST /sql -d "mode=raw&query=query=select id,packedfactors() from movies where match('star') option ranker=expr('1')"

{
  "took":0,
  "timed_out":false,
  "hits":{
    "total":72,
    "hits":[
      {
        "_id":"5",
        "_score":1,
        "_source":{
          "packedfactors()":{
            "bm25":612,
            "bm25a":0.69104159,
            "field_mask":32,
            "doc_word_count":1,
            "fields":[
              {
                "field":5,
                "lcs":1,
                "hit_count":1,
                "word_count":1,
                "tf_idf":0.24835411,
                "min_idf":0.24835411,
                "max_idf":0.24835411,
                "sum_idf":0.24835411,
                "min_hit_pos":1,
                "min_best_span_pos":1,
                "exact_hit":0,
                "max_window_hits":1,
                "min_gaps":0,
                "exact_order":1,
                "lccs":1,
                "wlccs":0.24835411,
                "atc":0.000000
              }
            ],
            "words":[
              {
                "tf":1,
                "idf":0.24835411
              }
            ]
          }
        }
      },
...
    ]
  }
}

▪️ Adding documents to an index

If you are looking for information about adding documents to a plain index please read section about adding data from external storages.

Adding documents in a real-time manner is only supported for Real-Time and percolate indexes. Corresponding SQL command or HTTP endpoint or a client's functions inserts new rows (documents) into an existing index with provided field values.

You can insert new documents with values for all fields of the index or only part of them. In this case the other fields will be filled with their default values (0 for scalar types, empty string for text types).

Expressions are not currently supported in INSERT and the values should be explicitly specified.

The ID field/value can be omitted as RT index supports auto-id functionality. You can use "0" as the id value to force automatic ID generation. Rows with duplicate IDs will not be overwritten by INSERT. You can use REPLACE for that.

‹›

SQL
HTTP
PHP

📋

General syntax:

INSERT INTO <index name> [(column, ...)]
VALUES (value, ...)
[, (...)]

INSERT INTO products(title,price) VALUES ('Crossbody Bag with Tassel', 19.85);
INSERT INTO products(title) VALUES ('Crossbody Bag with Tassel');
INSERT INTO products VALUES (0,'Yellow bag', 4.95);

POST /insert -d
{
  "index":"products",
  "id":1,
  "doc":
  {
    "title" : "Crossbody Bag with Tassel",
    "price" : 19.85
  }
}

POST /insert
{
  "index":"products",
  "id":2,
  "doc":
  {
    "title" : "Crossbody Bag with Tassel"
  }
}

POST /insert -d
{
  "index":"products",
  "id":0,
  "doc":
  {
    "title" : "Yellow bag"
  }
}

$index->addDocuments([
        ['id' => 1, 'title' => 'Crossbody Bag with Tassel', 'price' => 19.85]
]);
$index->addDocuments([
        ['id' => 2, 'title' => 'Crossbody Bag with Tassel']
]);
$index->addDocuments([
        ['id' => 0, 'title' => 'Yellow bag']
]);

‹›

Response

Query OK, 1 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Query OK, 1 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Query OK, 1 rows affected (0.00 sec)

There is an auto ID generation functionality for column ID of documents inserted or replaced into an real-time or a Percolate index. The generator produces a unique ID of a document with some guarantees and should not be considered an auto-incremented ID.

The value of ID generated is guaranteed to be unique under the following conditions:

server_id value of the current server is in range of 0 to 127 and is unique among nodes in the cluster or it uses the default value generated from MAC address as a seed
system time does not change for the Manticore node between server restarts
auto ID is generated fewer than 16 million times per second between search server restarts

The auto ID generator creates 64 bit integer for a document ID and uses the following schema:

0 to 23 bits is a counter that gets incremented on every call to auto ID generator
24 to 55 bits is a unix timestamp of the server start
56 to 63 bits is a server_id

This schema allows to be sure that the generated ID is unique among all nodes at the cluster and that data inserted into different cluster nodes does not create collisions between the nodes.

That is why the first ID from the generator used for auto ID is NOT 1 but a larger number. Also documents stream inserted into an index might have not sequential ID values if inserts into other indexes happen between the calls as the ID generator is single in the server and shared between all its indexes.

‹›

SQL
HTTP
PHP

📋

INSERT INTO products(title,price) VALUES ('Crossbody Bag with Tassel', 19.85);
INSERT INTO products VALUES (0,'Yello bag', 4.95);
select * from products;

POST /insert
{
  "index":"products",
  "id":0,
  "doc":
  {
    "title" : "Yellow bag"
  }
}

GET /search
{
  "index":"products",
  "query":{
    "query_string":""
  }
}

$index->addDocuments([
        ['id' => 0, 'title' => 'Yellow bag']
]);

‹›

Response

+---------------------+-----------+---------------------------+
| id                  | price     | title                     |
+---------------------+-----------+---------------------------+
| 1657860156022587404 | 19.850000 | Crossbody Bag with Tassel |
| 1657860156022587405 |  4.950000 | Yello bag                 |
+---------------------+-----------+---------------------------+

You can insert into a real-time index not just a single document, but as many as you want. It's ok to insert into a real-time index in batches of tens of thousands of documents. What's important to know in this case:

the larger the batch the higher is the latency of each insert operation
the larger the batch the higher indexation speed you can expect
each batch insert operation is considered a single transaction with atomicity guarantee, so you will either have all the new documents in the index at once or in case of a failure none of them will be added
you might want to increase max_packet_size value to allow bigger batches

‹›

SQL
HTTP
PHP

📋

For bulk insert just provide more documents in brackets after VALUES(). The syntax is:

INSERT INTO <index name>[(column1, column2, ...)] VALUES ()[,(value1,[value2, ...])]

Optional column name list lets you explicitly specify values for some of the columns present in the index. All the other columns will be filled with their default values (0 for scalar types, empty string for string types).

For example:

INSERT INTO products(title,price) VALUES ('Crossbody Bag with Tassel', 19.85), ('microfiber sheet set', 19.99), ('Pet Hair Remover Glove', 7.99);

The syntax is in general the same as for inserting a single document, just provide more lines one for each document and use json/bulk endpoint instead of json/insert and enclose each document into node "insert". Note that it also requires:

Content-Type: application/x-ndjson
The data itself should be formatted as a newline-delimited json (NDJSON). Basically it means that each line should contain exactly one json statement and end with a newline \n and maybe \r.

POST /bulk 
-H "Content-Type: application/x-ndjson" -d '
{"insert": {"index":"products", "id":1, "doc":  {"title":"Crossbody Bag with Tassel","price" : 19.85}}}
{"insert":{"index":"products", "id":2, "doc":  {"title":"microfiber sheet set","price" : 19.99}}}
'

Use method addDocuments():

$index->addDocuments([
        ['id' => 1, 'title' => 'Crossbody Bag with Tassel', 'price' => 19.85],
        ['id' => 2, 'title' => 'microfiber sheet set', 'price' => 19.99],
        ['id' => 3, 'title' => 'Pet Hair Remover Glove', 'price' => 7.99]
]);

‹›

Response

Query OK, 3 rows affected (0.01 sec)

Expressions are not currently supported in INSERT and values should be explicitly specified.

Multi-value attributes (MVA) are inserted as arrays of numbers.

‹›

SQL
HTTP
PHP

📋

INSERT INTO products(title, sizes) VALUES('shoes', (40,41,42,43));


POST /insert
{
  "index":"products",
  "id":1,
  "doc":
  {
    "title" : "shoes",
    "sizes" : [40, 41, 42, 43]
  }
}

$index->addDocument(
  ['title' => 'shoes', 'sizes' => [40,41,42,43]],
  1
);

JSON value can be inserted as as an escaped string (via SQL, HTTP, PHP) or as a JSON object (via HTTP).

‹›

SQL
HTTP
PHP

📋

INSERT INTO products VALUES (1, 'shoes', '{"size": 41, "color": "red"}');

JSON value can be inserted as as JSON object

POST /insert
{
  "index":"products",
  "id":1,
  "doc":
  {
    "title" : "shoes",
    "meta" : {
      "size": 41,
      "color": "red"
    }
  }
}

JSON value can be also inserted as a string containing escaped JSON:

POST /insert
{
  "index":"products",
  "id":1,
  "doc":
  {
    "title" : "shoes",
    "meta" : "{\"size\": 41, \"color\": \"red\"}"
  }
}

$index->addDocument(
  ['title' => 'shoes', 'meta' => '{"size": 41, "color": "red"}'],
  1
);

HTTP

Configuration

VIP connection

Connecting with cURL

SQL over HTTP

▪️ Adding documents to an index

Adding documents to a real-time index

Auto ID

Bulk adding documents

Inserting multi-value attributes (MVA) values

Inserting JSON