Since the release of Drupal 7, the Search API module has helped thousands of site builders to add an amazing search experience to their sites. Along with its numerous add-on modules it offers great flexibility and a large range of powerful features – facetting, autocomplete, search alerts, spellchecking, etc. – and its Views integration ensures that all aspects of the site's search page(s) can be configured in detail through a well-known interface.

In this session I will demonstrate the power of this module in its newest D8 version, with the numerous additional improvements that were made there. After giving a brief overview of the Search API I will show, live on stage, how to install the module, set up searches with it, how to use it in connection with Apache Solr and how to add additional functionality (depending on which extension modules are available at that point). I will also point out potential pitfalls and answer any questions people from the audience might have regarding the module.

Related resources

If you are interested in how to setup Search API and related modules in Drupal 7, I recommend my DrupalCon Prague session, which was recorded.

If you want to follow the module's port to Drupal 8, most of the current information is bundled in this meta issue. Our weekly meetings and other activities are blogged about on drupalsear.ch.

Previous knowledge required

This session only requires basic Drupal site building skills, no knowledge of the Search API or related modules (except maybe Views) is necessary.