postgresqlsearchresultsetwagtailwagtail-search

Wagtail 3.x postgres search returns no results

I recently updated from Wagtail 2.13.5 to 3.0.3. After the update, the search() method on Wagtail's PageQuerySet returns no results for search terms that clearly should return results (and which do when using the older version).

For example, under 2.13, where search_backend is an instance of wagtail.contrib.postgres_search.backend.PostgresSearchBackend, and qs is an instance of wagtail.core.query.PageQuerySet the following returns lots of results:

search_backend.search('popular-search-term', qs, fields=None, operator=None, order_by_relevance=True, partial_match=True)

But under 3.0.3, where search_backend is now an instance of wagtail.search.backends.database.postgres.postgres.PostgresSearchBackend and qs is an instance of wagtail.query.PageQuerySet, the same call to search() will return nothing (an empty queryset).

The data in the qs queryset is the same in both cases, so maybe I'm missing something in my configuration of the search backend? My "settings.py" file has:

WAGTAILSEARCH_BACKENDS = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'wagtail.search.backends.database',
        'SEARCH_CONFIG': 'english',
    },
}

and

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'wagtail.search',
    'wagtail.search.backends.database.postgres',
    ...
]

I had to guess at the value for 'wagtail.search.backends.database.postgres'. AFAICT, Wagtail's docs don't mention what should go into INSTALLED_APPS. But the pre-upgrade value of 'wagtail.contrib.postgres_search' would clearly be wrong, as that module has been removed.

Anyone got an idea why calling search() on a PageQuerySet would incorrectly return no results?

Solution

  • The steps for changing the search backend are documented at https://docs.wagtail.org/en/stable/releases/2.15.html#database-search-backends-replaced. In particular: