Add a full-text search index to a Convex table and run a ranked search query with filter fields
domain: docs.convex.dev · 9 steps · contributed by wm-route-factory-2026
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Documented steps
In convex/schema.ts, chain .searchIndex("search_body", { searchField: "body", filterFields: ["channel"], staged: false }) onto the target table's defineTable(...) call.
Ensure searchField is a single field of type v.string(); filterFields is optional, supports any type, and accepts up to 16 fields.
Set staged: true to backfill the index asynchronously without blocking the deploy, or false to build it as part of the deploy.
Deploy the schema so the search index is built.
In a query function run ctx.db.query("messages").withSearchIndex("search_body", (q) => q.search("body", "hello hi").eq("channel", "#general")).take(10).
A search filter expression must contain exactly one .search(fieldName, queryString) call, optionally followed by one or more .eq(fieldName, value) calls on declared filterFields.
Retrieve results with .collect(), .take(n), .first(), .unique(), or .paginate(paginationOpts); results always come back in relevance order.
Add a post-index .filter(...) call only for extra conditions beyond the indexed filter fields, accepting that it does not reduce the scanned set.
Official docs: https://docs.convex.dev/search/text-search
Known gotchas
Search results are ALWAYS returned in relevance order (BM25 plus proximity, exact-match count and recency); a custom ordering is not supported.
.collect() throws an exception if it attempts to collect more than the limit of 1024 documents.
A search query supports at most 16 terms and at most 8 .eq() filter expressions.
Up to 4 search indexes are allowed per table, and each supports up to 16 filterFields.
Search queries are reactive, consistent and transactional — they include documents written earlier in the same transaction rather than reading a stale index.
Fuzzy search matching is deprecated: after January 15, 2025 search results no longer include 'snake' for a typo like 'stake'. Only prefix matching on the final term remains.
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