Firestore / Firebase Typesense Search ⚡ 🔍

A Firebase function kit to sync data from your Firestore collections to Typesense, to be able to do full-text fuzzy search on your Firestore data, with typo tolerance, faceting, filtering, sorting, curation, synonyms, geosearch and more.

The kit deploys Cloud Functions into your own project that listen to your specified Firestore collections and sync Firestore documents to Typesense on creation, updates and deletes. It also provides a function to help you backfill data.

What is Typesense?

If you're new to Typesense, it is an open source search engine that is simple to use, run and scale, with clean APIs and documentation. Think of it as an open source alternative to Algolia and an easier-to-use, batteries-included alternative to ElasticSearch. Get a quick overview from this guide.

Note

Up to version 3.x this was a Firebase extension. Firebase Extensions shut down on March 31, 2027, so 4.0.0 ships as a function kit, the npm package typesense-firestore-search. If you have the extension installed, follow UPGRADING.md.

⚙️ Usage

Step 1️⃣ : Setup Prerequisites

Before installing the kit, make sure that you have:

1. Set up a Cloud Firestore database in your Firebase project.

   If using Google Workspace for Business, ensure that your default cloud compute based service account has the following roles (which can be found in the Google Cloud Console IAM section):

   • Artifact Registry Administrator
   • Artifact Registry Create-on-Push Writer
   • Artifact Registry Service Agent
   • Logs Writer
   • Storage Object Viewer

2. Set up a Typesense cluster on Typesense Cloud or Self-Hosted (free).

3. Set up a Typesense Collection either through the Typesense Cloud dashboard or through the API.

4. Installed firebase-tools 15.32.0 or later (npm install -g firebase-tools@latest).

Important

☝️ #3 above is a commonly missed step. The kit does not create the Typesense Collection for you. Instead it syncs data to a Typesense collection you've already created. If you see an HTTP 404 in the function logs, it's most likely because of missing this step.

Step 2️⃣ : Install the Kit

From your Firebase project directory, install the kit. The CLI prompts for each of the configuration parameters listed below and writes them to the kit's .env file:

firebase functions:kits:install --package typesense-firestore-search --project=[your-project-id]

Then deploy it:

firebase deploy --only functions:[kit-instance-id] --project=[your-project-id]

To change the configuration later, edit the kit's .env file and deploy again.

Syncing Multiple Firestore collections

One install can sync any number of Firestore collections, each into its own Typesense collection. List them in FIRESTORE_COLLECTION_PATHS and TYPESENSE_COLLECTION_NAMES (same order), with optional per-collection settings in FIRESTORE_COLLECTION_FIELDS_LIST and FLATTEN_NESTED_DOCUMENTS_LIST. Subcollection paths with placeholders such as users/{userId}/books are supported; the placeholder values are added to each Typesense document. A document is synced only into the collection it is directly in: with FIRESTORE_COLLECTION_PATHS=users, the documents in users/{userId}/books are not synced unless that path is listed too.

Warning

The Typesense document ID is the Firestore document ID, without its parent path. Under a placeholder path such as users/{userId}/books, two books with the same ID under different users are the same Typesense document: writing one overwrites the other, and deleting either removes it from Typesense. Auto-generated Firestore IDs don't collide, but IDs you choose yourself (an ISBN, a date, profile) can, so keep them unique across all parents.

🎛️ Configuration Parameters

Parameter	Description
LOCATION	Where do you want to deploy the functions? You usually want a location close to your database. For help selecting a location, refer to the location selection guide.
FIRESTORE_DATABASE_REGION	Where the Firestore Database that holds the Firestore collections you want to sync into Typesense is located. Refer to the Cloud Firestore locations guide.
DATABASE	The Firestore database to sync from. Defaults to (default).
FIRESTORE_COLLECTION_PATHS	Comma-separated list of Firestore collection paths to index, e.g. users,users/{userId}/books.
TYPESENSE_COLLECTION_NAMES	Comma-separated list of Typesense collection names, in the same order as the Firestore collection paths (you need to create these collections in Typesense yourself).
FIRESTORE_COLLECTION_FIELDS_LIST	Pipe-separated list of comma-separated field lists, one per collection, e.g. `name,email
FLATTEN_NESTED_DOCUMENTS_LIST	Comma-separated list of true/false, one per collection. Set true for Typesense Server v0.23.1 and below, since indexing nested objects is natively supported only in v0.24 and above.
TYPESENSE_HOSTS	A comma-separated list of Typesense Hosts (only domain without https or port number). For single node clusters, a single hostname is sufficient. For multi-node Highly Available or (Search Delivery Network) SDN Clusters, please be sure to mention all hostnames in a comma-separated list.
TYPESENSE_API_KEY	A Typesense API key with admin permissions. Click on "Generate API Key" in cluster dashboard in Typesense Cloud. Stored in Secret Manager.
LOG_TYPESENSE_INSERTS	Should data inserted into Typesense be logged in Cloud Logging? This can be useful for debugging, but should not be enabled in production.

⚠️ The kit connects to Typesense over HTTPS on port 443, since your data goes from Firebase to Typesense over the public internet and we want your data to be encrypted in transit. For Typesense Cloud, HTTPS is already configured for you.

When self-hosting Typesense, you want to make sure you set --api-port=443 and also get an SSL certificate from say LetsEncrypt or any registrar and configure Typesense to use it using the --ssl-certificate and --ssl-certificate-key server parameters. Alternatively, if you're running Typesense on your local machine, you can also set up a local HTTPS tunnel using something like ngrok (ngrok http 8108) and use the ngrok hostname in the kit configuration.

Example

If you have a Firestore database called (default) with a collection inside it called users in the nam5 region like this:

Here's the kit configuration, if you want to sync the users Firestore collection to Typesense:

LOCATION=us-central1
FIRESTORE_DATABASE_REGION=nam5
DATABASE=(default)
FIRESTORE_COLLECTION_PATHS=users
TYPESENSE_COLLECTION_NAMES=users
FIRESTORE_COLLECTION_FIELDS_LIST=
FLATTEN_NESTED_DOCUMENTS_LIST=false
TYPESENSE_HOSTS=xyz.a1.typesense.net
LOG_TYPESENSE_INSERTS=false

Step 3️⃣ : [Optional] Backfill existing data

The kit only syncs data that was created or changed in Firestore after it was deployed. In order to backfill data that already exists in your Firestore collections to your Typesense Collections:

• Create a new Firestore collection called typesense_sync through the Firestore UI.
• Create a new document with the ID backfill and contents of {trigger: true}
• [Optional] If you sync multiple collections, you can specify which particular collections are backfilled by setting the contents of the backfill document in the previous step to {trigger: true, firestore_collections: ["path/to/firestore_collection_1", "path/to/firestore_collection_2"] }

This will trigger the backfill background Cloud function, which will read data from your Firestore collection(s) and create equivalent documents in your Typesense collection.

Note

The backfill function is deployed with the Cloud Functions default timeout of 540 seconds (9 minutes). If you're backfilling a large collection (e.g. hundreds of thousands of documents or more) and the function times out before finishing, you can increase the timeout up to 3600 seconds (1 hour) from the Google Cloud Console by editing the backfill Cloud Run service and bumping the request timeout.

☁️ Cloud Functions

• indexOnWrite: A function that indexes data into Typesense when it's triggered by Firestore changes.

• backfill: A function that backfills data from Firestore collections into Typesense, triggered when a Firestore document with the path typesense_sync/backfill has the contents of trigger: true.

🔑 Access Required

The kit's functions run as a service account created for the kit, which is granted the following project IAM roles at deploy time:

• datastore.user (Reason: Required to backfill data from your Firestore collection into Typesense)
• eventarc.eventReceiver (Reason: Required to receive Firestore events)
• run.invoker (Reason: Required for Eventarc to invoke the functions)

🧾 Billing

To deploy Cloud Functions, your project must be on the Blaze (pay as you go) plan.

• The kit uses Firebase and Google Cloud Platform services, which have associated charges if you exceed the service’s free tier:
  • Cloud Firestore
  • Cloud Functions (Node.js 22 runtime)
  • Secret Manager
• Usage of the kit also requires you to have a running Typesense cluster either on Typesense Cloud or some self-hosted server. You are responsible for any associated costs with these services.

Development Workflow

The functions are written in strict TypeScript (src, compiled to lib); the repository root is the published package. Dependencies are managed with pnpm, which refuses versions younger than 7 days (minimumReleaseAge in pnpm-workspace.yaml).

Setup

With Nix, nix develop provides Node 22, pnpm and Java (for the Firestore emulator). Otherwise install those yourself. Docker is needed for the local Typesense server.

pnpm install

Checks

pnpm format        # oxfmt (pnpm format:check in CI)
pnpm typecheck     # tsc, strict
pnpm lint          # oxlint, type-aware
pnpm lint:guard    # rejects `any`, @ts-ignore/@ts-expect-error and lint-disable comments

Run Emulator

pnpm emulator
pnpm typesenseServer

• Emulator UI will be accessible at http://localhost:4000.
• Local Typesense server will be accessible at http://localhost:8108

Add records in the Firestore UI and they should be created in Typesense.

Run Tests

pnpm test:unit         # no emulator needed
pnpm test:integration  # builds, starts Typesense via docker compose if needed, runs each spec against the emulator
pnpm test              # both

The integration specs read their configuration from test/integration/fixtures/*.env.

Publish

• Update the version in package.json

• Add entry to CHANGELOG.md

• Run pnpm test

• Publish (prereleases with --tag next):

  pnpm publish --tag next

  The prepack hook rebuilds lib and adds an npm-shrinkwrap.json without dev dependencies, since kits are installed with npm. The direct dependencies use exact versions, so the shrinkwrap pins the same versions the tests ran against.

• Create release in GitHub

ℹ️ Support

Please read through the FAQ below, search through past GitHub issues, past threads in our knowledge base and if you're unable to find an answer, please open a GitHub issue in this repo or join our Slack community and ask there.

FAQs

• My Typesense collection is empty, even after deploying the kit. What could be wrong?

  The kit only syncs changes from your Firestore collections from the time when it is deployed. To backfill existing data from your Firestore collections into Typesense, you want to run the backfill step described here.

• My Typesense collection is missing some records. What could be wrong?

  This almost always is because the collection schema in Typesense does not match the structure of the documents in Firebase, and so Typesense is rejecting the documents due to validation failure. All validation errors returned by Typesense are logged in detail in the Cloud Functions logs, which are accessible via the Firebase web console. You want to search the logs for both the backfill function and also the indexOnWrite function.

• The backfill function is not getting triggered. What could be wrong?

  The backfill function watches for changes to a document with ID called backfill, in a Firestore collection called typesense_sync. This document should have a key called trigger with a boolean value of true. So if you've already created this key, you want to change its value to false and then change it back to true to re-trigger the backfill function.

• How do I sync multiple collections?

  List them all in one install. Read more here

• How do I backfill just a single collection?

  See the last bullet point under the backfilling instructions here