uiState

About this widget

You are currently reading the documentation for InstantSearch.js v4. Read our migration guide to learn how to upgrade from v3 to v4. You can still access the V3 documentation for this page.

The uiState object represents the state of the search UI and can be saved and returned to later. It’s updated whenever the user interacts with the UI and can be used to:

• Store the current search query and parameters
• Pass data to widgets
• Determine which results to show when a user visits a new page (the routing system)

It doesn’t directly store search results: just the state that leads to those results.

Example

This is an example of an InstantSearch uiState object. It represents what the user has searched for, how they’ve refined the results, and how the results are displayed.

Replace INDEX_NAME with the name of your Algolia index.

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const uiState = {
  INDEX_NAME: {
    query: 'Hill Valley',
    refinementList: {
      colors: ['white', 'black']
    },
    configure: {
      distinct: true,
    },
    menu: {
      category: 'Decoration'
    },
    hierarchicalMenu: {
      categories: ['Decoration > Clocks']
    },
    numericMenu: {
      price: '100:500'
    },
    ratingMenu: {
      rating: 4
    },
    range: {
      ageInYears: '2:10'
    },
    toggle: {
      freeShipping: true
    },
    geoSearch: {
      boundingBox: '47.3165,4.9665,47.3424,5.0201'
    },
    sortBy: 'most_popular_index',
    page: 2,
    hitsPerPage: 20
  },
};

Custom widgets

To have your custom widgets interact with the uiState object, you need to implement the getWidgetUiState and getWidgetSearchParameters methods in the connector. You can find more information in the Custom widgets guide.