Fuzzy Searching with Mongodb?

Question

I have managed to set up a search feature in my mongodb app. See the code below. This works very well however it only returns exact results. How would I change my code to make it accept more "fuzzy" search results? Thanks!

router.get("/", function(req, res){     if (req.query.search) {        Jobs.find({"name": req.query.search}, function(err, foundjobs){        if(err){            console.log(err);        } else {           res.render("jobs/index",{jobs:foundjobs});        }     });      }    Jobs.find({}, function(err, allJobs){        if(err){            console.log(err);        } else {           res.render("jobs/index",{jobs:allJobs});        }     }); }); 

Answer 1

I believe that to do "fuzzy" search you will need to use regex. This should accomplish what you're looking for (escapeRegex function source here):

function escapeRegex(text) {     return text.replace(/[-[\]{}()*+?.,\\^$|#\s]/g, "\\$&"); };  router.get("/", function(req, res) {     if (req.query.search) {        const regex = new RegExp(escapeRegex(req.query.search), 'gi');        Jobs.find({ "name": regex }, function(err, foundjobs) {            if(err) {                console.log(err);            } else {               res.render("jobs/index", { jobs: foundjobs });            }        });      } } 

That being said, your application can experience performance issues when querying mongo by regex. Using a library like search-index for search could help optimize your application's performance, with the added benefit of searching word stems (like returning "found" from "find").

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UPDATE: My original answer included a simple regular exression that would leave your application vulnerable to a regex DDoS attack. I've updated with a "safe" escaped regex.