search - 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.