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EXT:seal

SEAL Search - Flexible integration of the Search Engine Abstraction Layer (SEAL) project into TYPO3. Different index configurations and multiple possibilities. Use it with TYPO3 or for example with Meilisearch, Solr, Loupe, Typesense - without changing the integration. Have fun.

This extension was funded by the TYPO3 Association: community ideas I / community idea II & first blogpost / second blogpost

Requirements

• PHP 8.3+
• TYPO3 v13.4 or v14.0
• EXT:index

Installation

1. Install and configure the EXT:index extension
2. Run composer require lochmueller/seal (note: This extension only works in composer mode)
3. Optional: Install the right adapter if you want to use a specific engine (see below)
4. Load the SiteSet lochmueller/seal in your site configuration
5. Configure the search adapter via site configuration (DSN)
6. Configure individual search options

Configuration

The extension is configured via the TYPO3 site configuration. The following options are available:

Keyword Highlighting

If sealHighlighting is enabled, the configured fields are requested with the SEAL highlighting API and rendered with the <seal:highlight> ViewHelper:

The ViewHelper escapes the indexed value and renders the matches as <mark> elements, so no unescaped HTML from the index ends up in the frontend. With crop the text is shortened around the first match. Every field without a match falls back to the raw value of the document.

Search Form, URLs and Caching

The search form is submitted via GET, so the complete search state (search word, tag filters, geo coordinates, page) lives in the URL. Results are bookmarkable and shareable, the back button works without a "resend form?" dialog, and the pagination is able to reproduce the search in the first place.

Three things follow from that and are worth knowing when you override the templates:

• The form is plain HTML, not <f:form>. f:form always renders five __referrer[...] fields plus __trustedProperties; with method="get" that HMAC blob would end up in the query string of every result URL. Instead the field names carry the plugin namespace explicitly, e.g. name="{pluginNamespace}[search]". action and controller are hidden fields, because a browser discards the query string of the action URL on a GET submit.
• The plugin namespace is excluded from the cacheHash in ext_localconf.php ($GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['FE']['cacheHash']['excludedParameters'][] = '^tx_seal_search'). Without it a form submit would hit a missing/invalid cHash. The search action itself is already registered as non-cacheable.

• Links use <seal:uri.search>, not addQueryString. addQueryString="1" only keeps the route arguments of a request (PageLinkBuilder::getQueryArguments()), so it would silently drop the search from page 2 onwards, and "untrusted" would forward every unrelated query parameter. Lochmueller\Seal\Uri\SearchUriBuilder rebuilds the search state instead:

  Page 1 is omitted from the URI, and empty fields the browser submitted anyway are stripped, so one search always has one canonical URL. Use the same ViewHelper for your own links (sorting, facets) so they keep the current search.

Search statistics are only written for the first result page, otherwise paging through the results would log the same term over and over.

Accessibility (WCAG 2.2)

The shipped Fluid templates are built to pass a WCAG 2.2 AA audit out of the box:

• Search landmark – the form is rendered with role="search" and an aria-label.
• Grouped filters – tag and geo filters use <fieldset>/<legend> instead of an unassociated <label> (1.3.1).
• Unique DOM ids – every id is prefixed with a sealId derived from the content element uid, so multiple search plugins on one page keep their for and aria-describedby references intact (1.3.1 / 4.1.2).
• Result semantics – results are an ordered list of <article> elements, numbered continuously across pages, with a machine readable <time datetime="…"> for the index date.
• No redundant links – the preview image link is removed from the accessibility tree (technique H2) and the "open" button carries the result title for assistive technology (2.4.4).
• Pagination – aria-current="page", rel="prev"/rel="next", previous/next links, page numbers with a hidden "Page" prefix and an ellipsis for windowed paginations.
• Status messages – the result count and the geolocation status are live regions (4.1.3).
• Redundant entry – search word, radius and determined coordinates are restored from the URL after every submit and survive pagination (WCAG 2.2 – 3.3.7).
• Focus handling – submitting the form and following a pagination link jumps to the focusable result headline (2.4.3), which has scroll-margin-top so it is not obscured by sticky headers (WCAG 2.2 – 2.4.11).
• Target size – Resources/Public/Css/Seal.css guarantees the 24x24 px minimum for pagination and filter controls (WCAG 2.2 – 2.5.8) and ships the .seal-visually-hidden helper, so the templates stay accessible without Bootstrap.

All labels are translatable via Resources/Private/Language/locallang.xlf; there is no hard coded English left in the templates.

DSN Examples

Available Adapters

Install the adapter you need via composer:

CLI Commands

Extension Structure

Development

Credits

Thanks to SEAL for the nice idea and TYPO3 Association & TYPO3 Community for sponsoring the extension.