Elasticsearch

Moodle Global Search - Elasticsearch Backend Plugin

This plugin allows Moodle to use Elasticsearch as the search engine for Moodle's Global Search.

The following features are provided by this plugin:

• Multiple versions of Elasticsearch
• File indexing
• Request signing, compatible with Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Respects Moodle Proxy settings
• Image recognition and indexing
• Webservices

Supported Moodle Versions

This plugin currently supports Moodle:

• 3.1
• 3.2
• 3.3

Installation

NOTE: Complete all of these steps before trying to enable the Global Search functionality in Moodle.

1. Get the code and copy/ install it to:
   <moodledir>/search/engine/elastic
2. This plugin also depends on local_aws get the code from https://github.com/catalyst/moodle-local_aws and copy/ install it into
   <moodledir>/local/aws
3. Run the upgrade: :
   sudo -u www-data php admin/cli/upgrade Note: the user may be different to www-data on your system.
4. Set up the plugin in Site administration > Plugins > Search > Manage global search by selecting elastic as the search engine.
5. Configure the Elasticsearch plugin at: Site administration > Plugins > Search > Elastic
6. Set hostname and port of your Elasticsearch server
7. Optionally, change the Request size variable. Generally this can be left as is. Some Elasticsearch providers such as AWS have a limit on how big the HTTP payload can be. Therefore we limit it to a size in bytes.
8. To create the index and populate Elasticsearch with your site's data, run this CLI script.:
   sudo -u www-data php search/cli/indexer.php --force
9. Enable Global search in Site administration > Advanced features

Elasticsearch Version Support

Currently this plugin is tested to work against the following versions of Elasticsearch:

• 2.3.4
• 2.4.4
• 5.1.2
• 5.5.0