Mark Stott
Oct 1, 2021
  7246
(2 votes)

Setting Up Search & Navigation in .NET 5.0

UPDATE: The documentation has now been updated and can be found here: https://world.optimizely.com/documentation/developer-guides/search-navigation/getting-started/creating-your-project/

Optimizely CMS for .NET 5.0 is a very exciting thing.  Recently the .NET Core Preview documentation was archived and some of that documentation was merged into the live developer guides. Optimizely have a huge amount of developer documentation and it's going to take a while for this content to be updated for .NET 5.0.  Sadly the current documentation for Optimizely Search and Navigation is still focused on the .NET 4.x world

1. Add the EPiServer.Find.CMS nuget package to your .NET 5.0 solution.

2. Generate a new Search and Navigation index at https://find.episerver.com/

3. Configure the index details in app.config...

When you create the index, you will be shown this snippet to add to your web.config:

<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <section
            name="episerver.find" type="EPiServer.Find.Configuration, EPiServer.Find" requirePermission="false"/>
    </configSections>
    <episerver.find
        serviceUrl="https://demo01.find.episerver.net/RXQGZ5QpXU9cuRSN2181hqA77ZFrUq2e/"
        defaultIndex="yourname_indexname"/>
</configuration> 

You will instead add this to appsettings.json like so:

{
    "EPiServer": {
        "Find": {
            "ServiceUrl": "https://demo01.find.episerver.net/RXQGZ5QpXU9cuRSN2181hqA77ZFrUq2e/",
            "DefaultIndex": "yourname_indexname"
        } 
    } 
}

4. Configure your startup.cs to include the find configuration:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.AddCmsAspNetIdentity<ApplicationUser>();
    services.AddMvc();
    services.AddCms();
    services.AddFind();
 }

You should now have everything you need to write your search queries as normal:

var searchResult = _findClient.Search<SitePageData>()
                              .For(request.SearchText)
                              .UsingSynonyms()
                              .ApplyBestBets()
                              .Skip(skip)
                              .Take(pageSize)
                              .GetContentResult();
Oct 01, 2021

Comments

Scott Reed
Scott Reed Oct 1, 2021 04:41 PM

You can also do it in code (if you so wish) such as if you wanted you local 4th index to be in key vault or something

        public static void SetupSearchAndNavigation(this IServiceCollection services)
        {
            services.Configure<EPiServer.Find.FindOptions>(options =>
            {
                options.DefaultIndex = "INDEX";
                options.ServiceUrl = "URL";
            });

            services.AddCms();
            services.AddFind();
        }

Mark Stott
Mark Stott Oct 3, 2021 04:26 PM

Thank you for the suggestion Scott, it certainly provides alternatives, especially if the client is self hosted like a number of our own clients.  With the DXP platform, none of the index or connection string secrets are actually held anywhere near source code; so I'd expect not to apply this in code but by transforms with empty values again.

Scott Reed
Scott Reed Oct 4, 2021 07:53 AM

Yes that's why I was mentioned the 4th index which is outside of the DXP and usually used for local development or a test server. The startup.cs file as it support querying is local development can give us options for complex configuration options should be need to use them.

Antti Alasvuo
Antti Alasvuo Oct 5, 2021 03:13 PM

For future reference, the configuration of CMS 12+ version and Find, is hidden on this page: https://world.optimizely.com/documentation/developer-guides/search-navigation/getting-started/creating-your-project/ and scroll down to title "Configuring Search & Navigation for the website" (at least at the moment ;)).

Mark Stott
Mark Stott Oct 5, 2021 03:56 PM

Thank you for the update Anttl, at the time of writing that page was still only showing the .NET 4.8 CMS 11 version of the guidance :)

Deepmala S
Deepmala S Mar 9, 2023 10:02 AM

Thanks for this blog, I was finding this solution and it's really helpful and working too properly.

Mark Stott
Mark Stott Mar 9, 2023 11:56 AM

Thank you, I'm glad this has proved helpful after all this time :)

Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
Commerce 15 and CMS 13: Optimizely’s Next Step Toward AI-Powered, Graph-First Commerce

Optimizely is preparing to release Commerce 15 in mid-May 2026 , positioning this as a foundational shift—not just an upgrade. The direction is...

Augusto Davalos | May 7, 2026

The future of Content: Introducing Optimizely CMS 13

Optimizely In the rapidly evolving landscape of digital experience, the "monolithic vs. headless" debate is being replaced by a more sophisticated...

Aniket | May 6, 2026

Hide built in scheduled job from the admin UI

Ok so this probably goes into the not so useful section but late last night I got a veery strong feeling that all projects I am  involved with have...

Per Nergård (MVP) | May 6, 2026

Optimizely SaaS CMS Developer Certification Exam

The Optimizely SaaS CMS Developer Certification is an industry-recognized credential for developers and architects who build scalable, composable...

Megha Rathore | May 5, 2026

Piwik PRO Connector for Optimizely CMS — Now on NuGet (and Yes, It Speaks Both 12 and 13)

Analytics has spent the last decade living in another tab — and what's in that tab usually isn't the full story. Between consent requirements,...

Allan Thraen | May 4, 2026 |

A First Look at Optimizely Remote MCP Server for Experimentation

Optimizely just released a Remote MCP Server for Experimentation and I've been trying it out to see what it can do. If you don't know, MCP (Model...

Jacob Pretorius | May 1, 2026