Ferret.Hosting 0.1.7

Ferret

Postgres-first paging, filtering, sorting, and pluggable search for .NET. A drop-in alternative to Typesense / Meilisearch / Elastic for projects that already run PostgreSQL.

Status: 0.1 — early pre-1.0. All backends are implemented and the core is exercised by a live origin project, but the library is not yet broadly battle-tested. The public API may change before 1.0.0. See VERSIONING.md for the pre-1.0 policy and road to 1.0.

Features

• Pagination, filtering, sorting wired through a single query model.
• Trigram fuzzy search (pg_trgm GiST), full-text (tsvector / GIN), and pgvector ANN (HNSW) — opt-in, mix-and-match.
• Hybrid scoring (weighted RRF) across backends.
• Configurable embeddings — OpenAI-compatible, Ollama, or any Microsoft.Extensions.AI generator.
• Schema is generated for you from [Searchable] attributes via EF Core migrations (Ferret.Migrations) — or hand-roll it if you prefer.
• ORM-agnostic. EF Core or Dapper adapters ship in the box; bring your own session for any other stack.
• Attribute-driven entity discovery; pluggable naming strategy (snake_case / identity).
• ASP.NET Core model binders + one-line MapFerret endpoints with OpenAPI.

Choosing a backend

Trigram and full-text can run standalone or side by side; vector and hybrid add embeddings on top. See Full-text search, Vector search & embeddings, and Vector filtering for setup and trade-offs.

Packages

Install

dotnet add package Ferret.Core
dotnet add package Ferret.EntityFrameworkCore   # or: Ferret.Hydration.Dapper

Quickstart — EF Core

Annotate the entity:

using Ferret.Abstractions;

[SearchableEntity]
public sealed class Product : ISearchableEntity<Guid>
{
    public Guid Id { get; init; }

    [Searchable, Filterable, Sortable]
    public string Name { get; init; } = "";

    [Searchable(Weight = 2.0f)]
    public string Sku { get; init; } = "";
}

Wire up DI:

services.AddDbContext<AppDbContext>(o => o.UseNpgsql(connectionString));
services.AddFerret(opts => opts
    .ScanAssembly(typeof(Product).Assembly)
    .UseTrigramSearch());
services.AddFerretEntityFrameworkCore<AppDbContext>();

Generate the schema (Ferret.Migrations — see docs/migrations.md), then inject IFerretQueryService (Ferret.Abstractions.Querying) and search:

public sealed class ProductsController(IFerretQueryService search) : ControllerBase
{
    [HttpGet]
    public Task<OffsetResult<Product>> Get(CancellationToken ct) =>
        search.SearchOffsetAsync<Product, Guid>(new PagedQuery<Product, Guid>
        {
            Mode = PaginationMode.Offset,
            Search = "blue widge",
            Limit = 25,
            Page = 0,
            Sort = [new SortClause { Field = "Name", Direction = SortDirection.Ascending }],
        }, ct);
}

Cursor mode is available via search.SearchCursorAsync<...> returning CursorResult<T>.

Quickstart — Dapper

services.AddNpgsqlDataSource(connectionString);

services.AddFerret(opts => opts
    .ScanAssembly(typeof(Product).Assembly)
    .UseTrigramSearch());

services.AddFerretDapper();

Then inject the same IFerretQueryService the EF quickstart uses — application code is identical either way:

public sealed class ProductsController(IFerretQueryService search) : ControllerBase
{
    [HttpGet]
    public Task<OffsetResult<Product>> Get(CancellationToken ct) =>
        search.SearchOffsetAsync<Product, Guid>(
            new PagedQuery<Product, Guid> { Search = "widge", Limit = 25 }, ct);
}

See docs/advanced.md for custom connection factories and the lower-level IFerretEngine / session APIs.

Documentation

• Setup — EF Core quickstart, Dapper/BYO pointers.
• Adding Ferret to an existing app — retrofitting into an app that already has an EF model, migrations, and controllers.
• Schema & migrations — generated schema, reindex modes, the reindex worker/CLI, and the manual-SQL reference.
• Full-text search — groups, weights, hybrid.
• Multisearch — grouped multi-entity search for cmd-K UIs.
• Vector search & embeddings — connectors, version transitions.
• Vector filtering — why filters + vector search need care, and what the ecosystem does about it.
• ASP.NET Core — query shapes, MapFerret, legacy wire shape.
• Lower-level APIs — Dapper, IFerretEngine, bring-your-own session.

Compatibility

• .NET 10 SDK
• EF Core 10 (when using Ferret.EntityFrameworkCore / Ferret.Migrations)
• PostgreSQL 15, 16, 17 — CI matrix runs all three
• Extensions: trigram needs pg_trgm; full-text needs none; vector needs vector (pgvector)
• Ferret.Migrations builds on EntityFrameworkCore.ExtensibleMigrations (source)

License

MIT.