Elasticsearch Client for PHP: elasticsearch-php. Complete Guide

Elasticsearch Client for PHP: elasticsearch-php

Elasticsearch is a powerful distributed search engine and analytical database built on Apache Lucene. To interact with it from PHP applications, there is an official client — elasticsearch-php. This library provides a convenient and complete API for all operations: from indexing documents to complex full-text queries and aggregations.

Installation and Connection

Installation is done via Composer, the standard package manager for PHP:

composer require elasticsearch/elasticsearch

After installation, you need to create a client instance, specifying the host (or multiple hosts) of your Elasticsearch cluster:

<?phprequire 'vendor/autoload.php';

use Elastic\\Elasticsearch\\ClientBuilder;

$client = ClientBuilder::create()    ->setHosts(['http://localhost:9200'])    ->build();?>

For a secure connection (HTTPS, authentication), you can pass additional parameters:

$client = ClientBuilder::create()    ->setHosts(['https://user:password@my-elastic.cloud:9243'])    ->setSSLVerification(false) // for testing only!    ->build();

Basic Data Operations

Creating an Index

An index in Elasticsearch is analogous to a database in SQL. Before saving data, you can explicitly create it with a mapping:

$params = [    'index' => 'products',    'body' => [        'settings' => [            'number_of_shards' => 1,            'number_of_replicas' => 1        ],        'mappings' => [            'properties' => [                'title' => ['type' => 'text'],                'price' => ['type' => 'float'],                'created_at' => ['type' => 'date']            ]        ]    ]];

$response = $client->indices()->create($params);

Indexing a Document (Add/Update)

To add a single document, use the index method:

$params = [    'index' => 'products',    'id' => '1',    'body' => [        'title' => 'ASUS ROG Laptop',        'price' => 120000.00,        'created_at' => '2025-01-15'    ]];

$response = $client->index($params);

If a document with the same id already exists, it will be overwritten. For partial updates, use update.

Getting a Document

$params = [    'index' => 'products',    'id' => '1'];

$response = $client->get($params);$document = $response['_source'];echo $document['title']; // ASUS ROG Laptop

Deleting a Document

$params = [    'index' => 'products',    'id' => '1'];

$response = $client->delete($params);

Search and Filtering

The most powerful feature of Elasticsearch is full-text search. Example of searching for products by name:

$params = [    'index' => 'products',    'body' => [        'query' => [            'match' => [                'title' => 'laptop'            ]        ]    ]];

$response = $client->search($params);

// Processing resultsforeach ($response['hits']['hits'] as $hit) {    echo 'ID: ' . $hit['_id'] . ', Title: ' . $hit['_source']['title'] . "";}

You can combine conditions using bool queries:

$params = [    'index' => 'products',    'body' => [        'query' => [            'bool' => [                'must' => [                    ['match' => ['title' => 'laptop']]                ],                'filter' => [                    ['range' => ['price' => ['gte' => 50000