Hits

About this widget

The Hits component displays a list of search results. The component automatically reloads results when new hits are fetched from Algolia.

The HitsConnector is a generic class that you can customize by implementing a class or structure that represents your record and conforms to the Codable protocol. If, for some reason, your record can’t be parsed into the type you provided, the onError event of the Interactor instance will be triggered.

In case you prefer to deal with raw JSON objects, set JSON as the type of record and use the rawHitAtIndex(_ row: Int) -> [String: Any]? method to access a hit.

Examples

Define the custom type representing the hits in your index conforming to Codable protocol.

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struct CustomHitModel: Codable {
  let name: String
}

Instantiate a HitsConnector and launch an initial search on its searcher.

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let filterState: FilterState  = .init()
let hitsTableViewController = CustomHitsTableViewController()
let hitsConnector = HitsConnector<CustomHitModel>(appID: "YourApplicationID",
                                              apiKey: "YourSearchOnlyAPIKey",
                                              indexName: "YourIndexName",
                                              filterState: filterState,
                                              controller: hitsTableViewController)


hitsConnector.searcher.search()

Low-level API

If you want to fully control the Hits components and connect them manually, you can use the following components:

• Searcher: The Searcher that handles your searches.
• HitsInteractor: The logic applied to the hits.
• HitsController: The controller that interfaces with a concrete hits view.
• FilterState: The current state of the filters.

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let searcher: SingleIndexSearcher = SingleIndexSearcher(appID: "YourApplicationID",
                                                        apiKey: "YourSearchOnlyAPIKey",
                                                        indexName: "YourIndexName")

let filterState: FilterState  = .init()
let hitsInteractor: HitsInteractor<CustomHitModel> = .init()
let hitsTableViewController = CustomHitsTableViewController()

hitsInteractor.connectSearcher(searcher)
hitsInteractor.connectFilterState(filterState)
hitsInteractor.connectController(hitsTableViewController)
searcher.search()

Now, each time you launch a new search:

• The Searcher receives new results and transmit them to HitsInteractor
• The HitsInteractor parses search results and notifies HitsController
• The HitsController refreshes the view presenting the hits

HitsController

The default controllers, e.g., HitsTableViewController and HitsCollectionViewController, allow you to create a basic Hits view based on UITableView and UICollectionView components from UIKit.

You must configure these controllers using the TableViewCellConfigurable/CollectionViewCellConfigurable implementation protocols that define how your hit model is bound to a concrete cell class. Here is an example of the implementation using the UITableViewCell and CustomHitModel defined above.

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struct CustomCellConfigurator: TableViewCellConfigurable {
  let model: CustomHitModel
  
  init(model: CustomHitModel, indexPath: IndexPath) {
    self.model = model
  }
  
  func configure(_ cell: UITableViewCell) {
    cell.textLabel?.text = model.name
  }
}

Define a convenient type alias for your view controller using the CellConfigurable implementation.

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typealias CustomHitsTableViewController = HitsTableViewController<CustomCellConfigurator>

Customization

You can subclass the HitsTableViewController or HitsCollectionViewControllerto customize their behavior.

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class MoreCustomHitsTableViewController: HitsTableViewController<CustomCellConfigurator> {
  ...  
}

Customizing your view

The default controllers, e.g. HitsTableViewController and HitsCollectionViewController, work well when you want to use native UIKit with their default behavior.

If you want to use another component as a hits view, or want to introduce some custom behavior to the already provided UIKit component, you can create your own controller conforming to the HitsController protocol.

Protocol

var hitsSource: DataSource?:

Reference to an entity providing a list of hits.

func reload():

Function called when we require a reload of the hits view.

func scrollToTop():

Function called when we have to scroll to the top of the hits view.

Example

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public class CustomHitsTableViewController: NSObject, HitsController {

  public let tableView: UITableView
  
  public weak var hitsSource: HitsInteractor<Item>?

  public init(tableView: UITableView) {
    self.tableView = tableView
  }

  public func reload() {
    tableView.reloadData()
  }

  public func scrollToTop() {
    guard tableView.numberOfRows(inSection: 0) != 0 else { return }
    let indexPath = IndexPath(row: 0, section: 0)
    self.tableView.scrollToRow(at: indexPath, at: .top, animated: false)
  }

}

Result metadata and Hit structure

Each hit returned by Algolia is enriched with search metadata, like highlightResult, objectID, and snippetResult. InstantSearch provides an easy way to parse these using the Hit wrapper structure. This is a generic structure that encapsulates the type of your record, and gives a strongly typed access to metadata of a hit.

For example, consider the following record structure:

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struct Movie: Codable {
  let title: String
  let year: Int
}

/* An appropriate structure for representing a record in the following json format:
{
  "title": "Titanic",
  "year": 1997
}
*/

Conforming to the Codable protocol, it is ready to use with the HitsInteractor as follows:

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let hitsInteractor = HitsInteractor<Movie>()

However, by doing this, all the metadata which comes with each hit will be ignored. To keep search metadata, wrap your record structure into the provided Hit structure.

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let hitsInteractor = HitsInteractor<Hit<Movie>>()

You can still extract your Movie object by accessing the object field of Hit:

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let movieHit: Hit<Movie> = hitsInteractor.hit(atIndex: ...)
let movie: Movie = movieHit.object

The Hit structure gives access to the following fields:

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// Hit identifier attributed by Algolia
let objectID: String

// Wrapped record object
let object: T

// Snippeted attributes.
let snippetResult: TreeModel<SnippetResult>?

// Highlighted attributes. Each attribute contains an object or an array of objects (if the attribute in question is an array) with the following attributes.
let highlightResult: TreeModel<HighlightResult>?

// Ranking information.
let rankingInfo: RankingInfo?

// Geolocation information
let geolocation: Point?