Orama

1 min read · 178 words

Setup

bun add @orama/orama

PUBLIC_SVOCS_SEARCH_PROVIDER=orama bun run build

That’s the whole configuration. Orama indexes in the browser, so there’s no server or sync step to run.

How it works

A prerendered route, /search-index.orama.json, serves every page’s {id, url, title, content} as a plain JSON array. It’s built during vite build itself, guarded so it 404s (and is skipped) on any other backend. The ⌘K dialog fetches that JSON once, builds a fresh in-memory Orama index with create() + insertMultiple(), and searches locally from then on.

Why build the index in the browser instead of shipping a pre-built one?

Orama does support serializing a pre-built database via @orama/plugin-data-persistence, but that plugin pulls in dpack, which depends on Node’s Transform streams. Those are unavailable in the browser, and it breaks at runtime even when you only use the 'json' format (orama#876). Shipping raw documents and indexing client-side sidesteps the dependency entirely, and re-indexing a few dozen docs in-browser is effectively free.

Reference

Indexer: src/lib/search/providers/orama-indexer.ts
Route: src/routes/search-index.orama.json/+server.ts
Client: src/lib/search/providers/orama-client.ts