Running Elasticsearch server on a mobile device (android / iphone / ios)

Question

I would like to know if it is possible to run an Elasticsearch server on a mobile device (android / iphone / ios) and if so, how I should go about doing it.

In my case, the reason for doing it is to have an offline database on the device that is easily searchable (with all elasticsearch advanced functions)

Optionally, I would maybe also use elasticsearch's cluster/replication capacities to keep the offline data on the device synced with a server.

Answer 1

I'm also looking for a fulltext search engine for Offline First mobile apps.

I haven't developped anything yet, but I think the easiest solution can be using the Clucene Library (a C++ version of Lucene) as fulltext search engine instead of ElasticSearch (which is based on Lucene - Java).

In fact, we don't need all the features of Elasticsearch for the mobile, such as webserver, restfull api, etc...

You can find some work around on Google:

• https://github.com/asheeshv/CLucene-iOS-Android-Win8
• https://github.com/saturnman/clucene-iOS
• https://github.com/hurongliang/clucene-ios-example

Still looking for a Cordova/Phonegap solution...

Hope it can help.

Edit:

I have found this tool that provide Offline First capabilities in Javascript. It will work with Cordova/Phone Gap and maybe with ReactNative:

http://elasticlunr.com/

Answer 2

Well, maybe (at least on Android, for iPhone the answer is no). Others have discussed it not certain that anyone has succeeded. The Android Dalvik is a JVM, just missing some things that are typically not required for mobile apps. In theory you should be able to try to compile ES and run it on Android. However, you are likely to run into issues with missing libraries and apis that ES requires, so it all depends on how comfortable you are diving in to ES source code to resolve them.

This previous discussion might be of help, you might try to reach out to those on the thread to see if anyone succeeded:

http://elasticsearch-users.115913.n3.nabble.com/ElasticSearch-HTTP-Server-on-Android-td4056423.html

Answer 3

No, you can't , at least for now there is no official build that can run in mobile devices.