meilisearch/MeiliSearch

Phrase search doesn't work when it contains stop_words

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#5298 opened on Jan 29, 2025

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 (0 comments) (0 reactions) (0 assignees)Rust (20,887 stars) (733 forks)batch import
bugcontribution acceptedhelp wanted

Description

Describe the bug Searching a query containing a phrase search like "the soup of the day" when having stop words in the settings like ["of", "the"] will never return any document, even if some documents exactly match the query.

To Reproduce See the below discussion: https://github.com/orgs/meilisearch/discussions/793

Meilisearch version: v.1.12.7

Potential Fix See the below comment containing a part of the solution: https://github.com/orgs/meilisearch/discussions/793#discussioncomment-11967148

Contributor guide

Tech stack
rust
Domain
backendsearch
Issue type
bug
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
fresh
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
clear
Prerequisites
Rust basicsUnderstanding of search algorithmsFamiliarity with Meilisearch
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
70
Research direction
Start by reading the linked discussion (https://github.com/orgs/meilisearch/discussions/793) and the comment with a potential fix (https://github.com/orgs/meilisearch/discussions/793#discussioncomment 11967148). Examine how stop words are handled in the search indexing and phrase search logic, likely in the `milli` crate. Focus on the interaction between stop words filtering and phrase query parsing. No existing PRs are linked, so this is open for contribution.