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Search (OrchardCore.Search)

The OrchardCore.Search module provides a frontend search experience for your site. It exposes a search page and a search form, and queries an index built by one of the search providers (Lucene, Elasticsearch or Azure AI Search).

This module only provides the user-facing search UI. The actual indexes are created and managed by the Indexing infrastructure together with a provider:

Enable OrchardCore.Search plus at least one provider feature, and create an index profile, before using the search page.

Search page

The module registers a search endpoint:

/search/{index?}
  • index (optional) — the name of the index profile to query. When omitted, the default index configured in the search settings is used.
  • terms — the search query, passed as a query string value (/search?terms=orchard).

If no index name is supplied and no default index is configured, a warning is displayed. If the requested index does not exist, the endpoint returns 404.

Results are paged using the site's configured page size, with "previous"/"next" links generated automatically.

Settings

Configure the search experience under Search > Settings > Site Search in the admin (requires the Manage Search Settings permission).

Setting Description
DefaultIndexProfileName The index profile queried when no index is specified in the URL.
PageTitle The title displayed on the search results page.
Placeholder The placeholder text shown in the search input box.

These settings can be exported and imported through a deployment plan using the Search Settings deployment step.

Permissions

Permission Description
Manage Search Settings Allows configuring the site search settings.
Query Search Index Allows querying a search index. Granted per index profile.

Both permissions are granted to the Administrator role by default. To let anonymous or other roles use the search page, grant Query Search Index for the relevant index profile.

Search form

The module ships a SearchFormPart and a Search Form widget so a search box can be placed anywhere, such as in a layer zone or on a page. The form submits a GET request to the /search endpoint with the entered Terms. The placeholder text is data-localizable.

Theming

The search UI is rendered through shapes that you can override in your theme:

Shape Template Purpose
Search Search.cshtml The overall search page.
Search-Form Search-Form.cshtml The search input form.
Search-Results Search-Results.cshtml The list of results.
Search-List Search-List.cshtml The container of the result items.

Copy these templates into your theme to customize the markup. Result highlighting is provided when the underlying search provider returns highlights.