Build a Searchable Catalog with Filters, Facets, and Semantic Search | by Sergey Nikolaev | Apr, 2026 | MediumSitemapOpen in appSign up<br>Sign in

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Build a Searchable Catalog with Filters, Facets, and Semantic Search

Sergey Nikolaev

7 min read·<br>Apr 30, 2026

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A search box is easy. A searchable catalog that keeps being useful after the first query is the harder part.<br>That is the problem this demo takes on. It uses a small board-game catalog, but the shape of the problem is familiar: users type something half-remembered, misspell it, narrow by constraints, keep browsing, open a result, then want “more like this” without starting over. If your product has that flow, most of the work is not the UI polish. It is getting the search behavior right without turning the stack into a science project.<br>In this article, we build a searchable catalog with autocomplete, typo tolerance, filters, facets, deep pagination, semantic search, and similar-item recommendations.<br>You can try the hosted version first:<br>https://catalog.manticoresearch.com<br>Press enter or click to view image in full size

The app itself is implemented in PHP, but that is not really the story here. The interesting part is how little ceremony you need to get from a basic query box to something that already feels like a working catalog: search, filters, facets, and similar-item discovery all show up quickly.<br>Run it locally<br>To run the same demo locally, you only need PHP 8.1+, Composer, and Docker (or any other way to run Manticore).<br>In this setup, Manticore is the search engine behind the catalog: it handles indexing, filtering, faceting, and semantic retrieval. The repo already includes a Docker setup for it, so the quickest way to get the demo running is to clone the repo and start Manticore from the project root:<br>git clone https://github.com/manticoresoftware/php-catalog-demo<br>cd php-catalog-demo<br>docker compose up -ddocker compose ps should show the container as running.<br>Inside the cloned repo, create the app environment file:<br>cp app/.env.example app/.envFor a local run, the important part is just how the app reaches Manticore:<br>MANTICORE_HOST=127.0.0.1<br>MANTICORE_PORT=9308Install dependencies:<br>cd app<br>composer installThe demo reads those settings and creates a Manticore client:<br>$settings = require $root . '/config/settings.php';$client = new Client([<br>'host' => $settings['manticore']['host'],<br>'port' => $settings['manticore']['port'],<br>'transport' => 'Http',<br>]);Then load the demo dataset:<br>php bin/bootstrap-demo.phpThat command recreates the demo table and imports the starter catalog, so you begin from a known state instead of debugging old data.<br>Start the app:<br>php -S localhost:8081 -t publicOpen http://localhost:8081/ and you have a working catalog to search.<br>Not glamorous. Still worth it. A lot of search demos lose people before the first query because setup sprawls. This one does not need much.<br>What makes the app feel usable<br>The part I care about most is not that the demo returns results. Plenty of demos do that. It is that the search flow holds together as users get more specific.<br>Start with autocomplete<br>People usually begin with fragments. Sometimes they remember the exact game title. Often they do not.<br>So the first layer is autocomplete:<br>$payload = [<br>'body' => [<br>'query' => $term,<br>'table' => $this->tableName,<br>'options' => ['limit' => $limit, 'force_bigrams' => 1],<br>],<br>];<br>$suggestions = $this->client->autocomplete($payload);Using force_bigrams here helps tighten typo-tolerant matching for short or slightly wrong input, which is exactly where autocomplete can otherwise get mushy.<br>Press enter or click to view image in full size

This is a small feature, but it changes the feel of the app immediately. Users stop guessing what your catalog calls things.<br>Make the first results page forgiving<br>Once the query is submitted, the first page needs to be useful even when the spelling is off by a bit.<br>$search = (new Search($this->client))<br>->setTable($this->tableName)<br>->limit($limit);if ($query !== '') {<br>$search->search($query);<br>if ($fuzzy) {<br>$search->option('fuzzy', 1)->option('force_bigrams', 1);<br>} else {<br>$search->search('*');<br>}Fuzzy mode is doing plain practical work here: recovering close matches when users do not type the title exactly right.<br>Press enter or click to view image in full size

If you want the lower-level details, see Spell correction and fuzzy search .<br>Let users narrow without rewriting<br>This is where many search interfaces get annoying. The query is close enough, but the result set is still too broad, so now the user has to reformulate it from scratch.<br>Better to let them narrow in place.<br>Range filters handle constraints like price, player count, play time, and release year. Facets expose the shape of the current result set so users can click into categories or tags instead of thinking up a more precise sentence.<br>$attributeFilters =...