backstage/docs/features/search

id, title, sidebar_label, description

id	title	sidebar_label	description
search-overview	Search Documentation	Overview	Backstage Search lets you find the right information you are looking for in the Backstage ecosystem.

Backstage Search

What is it?

Backstage Search lets you find the right information you are looking for in the Backstage ecosystem.

Features

• A federated, faceted search, searching across all entities registered in your Backstage instance.

• A search that lets you plug in your own search engine of choice.

• A standardized search API where you can choose to index other plugins data.

Project roadmap

Version	Description
Backstage Search Pre-Alpha ✅	Search Frontend letting you search through the entities of the software catalog. See Pre-Alpha Use Cases.
Backstage Search Alpha ✅	Basic “out-of-the-box” in-memory indexing process of entities, and their metadata, registered to the Software Catalog. See Alpha Use Cases.
Backstage Search Beta ⌛	At least one production-ready search engine that supports the same use-cases as in the alpha. See Beta Use Cases.
Backstage Search GA ⌛	A stable Search API for plugin developers to add search to their plugins, and app integrators to expose that to their users. See GA Use Cases.

Use Cases

Backstage Search Pre-Alpha

The pre-alpha is intended to solve for the following user stories, but will get there by means of a front-end only, non-extensible MVP.

• As a software engineer I should be able to navigate to a search page and search for entities registered in the Software Catalog.
• As a software engineer I should be able to use the search input field in the sidebar to search for entities registered in the Software Catalog.
• As a software engineer I should be able to see the number of results my search returned.
• As a software engineer I should be able to filter on metadata (kind, lifecycle) when I’ve performed a search.
• As a software engineer I should be able to hide the filters if I don’t need to use them.

Backstage Search Alpha

We will consider Backstage Search to be in alpha when the above use-cases are met, but built on top of a flexible, extensible platform.

• As an integrator, I should be able to provide all of the pre-alpha experiences to my users if I choose, but also be able to customize the experience using a composable set of components.
• As a plugin developer, I should have a standard way to expose my plugin's data to Backstage Search.
• As an integrator, I should still be able to expose everything in the Software Catalog in search, but it should be possible to customize what is searchable.
• As an integrator, although I should be able to customize all of the above, it should be possible to have the pre-alpha user experiences covered without having to set up and configure a search engine.

Backstage Search Beta

We will consider Backstage Search to be in a beta phase when the above use-cases are met, and can be deployed using a production-ready search engine.

• As an integrator, I should be able to power my Backstage Search experience (including querying and indexing) using a production-ready search engine like ElasticSearch.
• As an integrator, I should be able to configure the connection to my search engine in app_config.yaml.
• As an integrator, I should be able to tune the queries sent to my chosen search engine according to my organization's needs, but a sensible default query should be in place so that I am not required to do so.

Backstage Search GA

We will consider Backstage Search to be generally available (GA) when the above use-cases are met, and an ecosystem of search-enabled plugins are available and stable.

• As a plugin developer, there should be at least one example of a Backstage plugin that integrates with search that I can use as inspiration for my own plugin's search capabilities (for example, the TechDocs plugin).
• As an app integrator, there should be plenty of examples and documentation on how to customize and extend search in my Backstage instance to meet my organization's needs.

more to come...

Search Engines Supported

See Backstage Search Architecture to get an overview of how the search engines are used.

Search Engine	Support Status
Basic (lunr)	✅
ElasticSearch	Not yet ❌

Reach out to us if you want to chat about support for more search engines.

Plugins Integrated with Search

Plugin	Support Status
Catalog	✅
TechDocs	Not yet ❌

Tech Stack

Stack	Location
Frontend Plugin	@backstage/plugin-search
Backend Plugin	@backstage/plugin-search-backend
Indexer Plugin	@backstage/plugin-search-backend-node
Common Code	@backstage/search-common

Get Involved

For any questions, feedback, or to help move search forward, reach out to us in the #search channel of our Discord chatroom.