External search¶

Sleet includes a static search resource by default. You can replace it with an external NuGet Search API service when clients need server-side filtering and paging.

Static search behavior¶

The built-in search/query resource is a static JSON file. Sleet writes every package id into one response with all versions for each id. It does not apply the NuGet search query parameters, so it does not filter by q, skip, take, prerelease, or semVerLevel.

This is enough for small feeds. On large feeds, clients such as Visual Studio can show incomplete browse or search results because they expect a paged search service.

Set an external search URL¶

Set the externalsearch feed setting to the Search API endpoint:

sleet feed-settings --set externalsearch:https://example.org/search/query

Sleet stores the value in sleet.settings.json and immediately updates the SearchQueryService/3.0.0-beta resource in index.json to use that URL. sleet recreate is not needed for this setting, even though feed-settings prints a general reminder to run recreate.

Revert to static search¶

Unset externalsearch to point the search resource back to Sleet's static search/query file:

sleet feed-settings --unset externalsearch

This also updates index.json immediately.

External service requirements¶

The external service must implement the NuGet Search API. NuGet clients discover it from the service index and call it with query parameters such as:

Parameter	Purpose
`q`	Search text.
`skip`	Number of results to skip.
`take`	Number of results to return.
`prerelease`	Whether prerelease packages are included.
`semVerLevel`	SemVer compatibility level requested by the client.

See Microsoft's NuGet Search API documentation for the full protocol. Sleet.Search is an example external search service for Sleet feeds.

See feed settings for the setting reference.