Find for TYPO3

TYPO3’s built-in search holds up to about 500 pages, beyond that you need Solr

The standard TYPO3 search (EXT:indexed_search) indexes the rendered HTML output and stores it in a database table. For small websites with 50-500 pages, that works. From 1,000 pages on, search gets slow (response times above 2 seconds), and from 5,000 pages it becomes unusable. EXT:find is a Solr-based search extension that offers an alternative to the established EXT:solr stack: more flexible configuration, its own query builder and a different approach to faceted search.

Choosing between EXT:find and EXT:solr is not a question of quality but of architecture. EXT:solr has the larger community and more features out of the box. EXT:find gives you more flexibility in configuring queries and suits projects with unusual search requirements.

Typical use cases

Specialist portals with domain-specific search. A legal information portal with 15,000 documents needs to search by statutory provision, case number and keyword at the same time. EXT:find lets you define a different query type for each search field: exact match for case numbers, fuzzy search for free text, range filters for date fields. For a specialist publisher with 22,000 documents, EXT:find returned results in under 100 milliseconds, regardless of how complex the filtering was.

E-commerce search with product attributes. Products have attributes (color, size, weight, price) that serve as facets in the search. A visitor searches for “M8 bolt”, then filters by the material “stainless steel” and a price “under €5”. EXT:find maps these facets directly to Solr fields and generates the filter navigation automatically from the Solr configuration.

Multilingual full-text search. International websites need search that handles the quirks of each language: German compound nouns (Donaudampfschifffahrt, Danube steamship navigation, splits into Donau + Dampf + Schifffahrt), Polish noun declension, Spanish accents. Solr ships with language analyzers for more than 30 languages. EXT:find configures the right analyzer for each language and creates language-specific Solr cores.

Technical architecture

EXT:find talks to an Apache Solr server over HTTP/JSON. The architecture has three components: the Solr server (indexing and search), the indexer (writes TYPO3 content to Solr) and the frontend plugin (search input, results, facets).

The indexer walks the TYPO3 page tree and sends the content of each page to Solr as a JSON document. It indexes not only the visible content but also metadata: page title, description, categories, keywords and custom fields. Indexing runs as a scheduler task (recommended: after every content update, or as a full index overnight).

Where EXT:find differs from EXT:solr is the query layer. Instead of a fixed query structure, find offers a configurable query builder: through TypoScript or FlexForms you define which Solr fields are searched, how they are weighted (boosting), which filters apply automatically and how results are sorted.

Facets are configured through Solr field definitions. Every field that should act as a facet has to be defined as a facet field in the Solr schema configuration. EXT:find reads the available facets from the Solr configuration and renders them as a filter menu in the frontend. The filters work with GET parameters, which gives filtered result pages SEO-friendly URLs.

Common problems and solutions

Setting up and maintaining the Solr server. Solr is a Java-based server that has to be run separately. For TYPO3 agencies without Java experience, the setup is a hurdle: JVM configuration, Solr core management, schema updates, monitoring. Solution: use managed Solr (for example Websolr or SearchStax) or run Solr as a Docker container. The official Solr Docker image reduces the setup to 3 commands.

Poor search quality. Visitors search for “contact” and get 200 results, because the word appears in the footer of every page. Solution: configure field weighting. Title matches are weighted 10x higher than body matches, H2 matches 5x higher than body text. EXT:find lets you set this weighting in TypoScript: plugin.tx_find.settings.boostFields.title = 10.

The index doesn’t update. Editors change content, but the search keeps showing old results. The cause: the indexer’s scheduler task isn’t running or has failed. Solution: run the scheduler task at short intervals (every 15 minutes for the delta index, overnight for the full index) and set up a monitoring alert that fires on indexing errors.

Migration and version compatibility

EXT:find supports TYPO3 v10 and v11 with Solr 8 and 9. A beta version for TYPO3 v12 is available on GitHub. The extension is maintained by the research and development unit of SUB Göttingen, the Göttingen State and University Library, and has an academic user base.

EXT:solr is the more popular alternative, with official v12 support and commercial support options (dkd Internet Service GmbH). For most TYPO3 projects, EXT:solr is the safe choice. EXT:find is the better fit for projects with special query requirements (academic search, specialist databases, multi-index scenarios).

Migrating from EXT:indexed_search to Solr (whether find or solr) involves setting up the Solr server, configuring the schema, indexing the content and adapting the frontend templates. Expect 3-5 days for a standard website and 1-2 weeks for complex portals. Gosign advises on the right search stack and takes care of setup, configuration and fine-tuning of search quality.