How-to guides

Keep the theme’s own search box

By default searchlite takes over the theme’s search box so that it opens the dialog. To leave the box wired to Sphinx’s search.html, set:

searchlite_adopt_theme_search = False

The dialog still opens with / and ⌘K, and from any element with data-searchlite-open.

Add a button that opens the dialog

Add the data-searchlite-open attribute to any element in your templates:

<button type="button" data-searchlite-open>Search</button>

Use your own search UI

Turn off the bundled dialog so only the engine is shipped:

searchlite_ui = False

Then query the engine from your own script:

const engine = SearchLite.create({ url: SearchLite.indexUrl });

await engine.load();
const { items, terms } = engine.search("query");

for (const item of items) {
  const snippet = SearchLite.highlight(SearchLite.excerpt(item, terms), terms);
  // render item.u, item.t, item.s, and snippet
}

See the JavaScript API for what each call returns.

Restyle the dialog

Set --searchlite-* custom properties on #searchlite-dialog:

#searchlite-dialog {
  --searchlite-background: #111;
  --searchlite-foreground: #eee;
  --searchlite-radius: 0.25rem;
}

Target the dialog element rather than :root. The dialog copies the page’s colors onto itself at runtime, and those inline values override anything inherited from :root. Setting the background and foreground is usually enough, because the muted, border, and accent colors are mixed from the foreground.