Algolia DevCon
Oct. 2–3 2024, virtual.

The Ruby API clients let you interact with Algolia’s APIs from your Ruby backend.

If you’re building a Ruby on Rails app, see Set up Algolia for Ruby on Rails.

Install the library

All API clients are part of the algolia gem. You’ll need Ruby 2.2 or later.

1
gem install algolia -v '>= 3.0.0' '< 4.0'

Test your installation

To test your installation, try running a short program that adds a record to a test index, searches your index, and prints the results.

  1. If you haven’t already, create an Algolia account.

  2. Copy the following code into a new file hello_algolia.rb. Replace ALGOLIA_APPLICATION_ID and ALGOLIA_API_KEY with values from your account. Make sure to use an API key with addObject and search permissions.

    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10
    11
    12
    13
    14
    15
    16
    17
    18
    19
    20
    21
    22
    23
    24
    25
    26
    27
    28
    29
    30
    31
    32
    
    # File: hello_algolia.rb
    require "algolia"
    
    app_id = "ALGOLIA_APPLICATION_ID"
    # API key with `addObject` and `search` ACL
    api_key = "ALGOLIA_API_KEY"
    index_name = "test-index"
    
    client = Algolia::SearchClient.create(app_id, api_key)
    
    record = { objectID: "object-1", name: "test record" }
    
    # Add record to an index
    save_resp = client.save_object(
      index_name = index_name,
      body = record
    )
    
    # Wait until indexing is done
    client.wait_for_task(
      index_name = index_name,
      task_id = save_resp.task_id
    )
    
    # Search for 'test'
    results = client.search(
      search_method_params = {
        requests: [{ indexName: index_name, query: "test" }]
      }
    )
    
    puts results.to_json
    

    In production, don’t include your credentials in your code. Use environment variables instead.

  3. Run: ruby hello_algolia.rb

If the command is successful, you’ll see the API response in JSON format.

Next steps

You can view your new index in the Algolia dashboard.

Did you find this page helpful?
Ruby API clients v3