Implementing search with Ajax
If you want to enable fuzzy searching globally (across the entire Craft install - CP, front-end, ElementAPI, etc.), you can use the defaultSearchTerms config setting.

You can also just do it programmatically from the ElementAPI plugin with something like:

Suffix wildcard:

'criteria' =&gt; ['title' =&gt; $search ~ '*']


Prefix wildcard:

'criteria' =&gt; ['title' =&gt; '*' ~ $search]


Both sides:

'criteria' =&gt; ['title' =&gt; '*' ~ $search ~ '*']


Or you can use any of the other search syntaxes listed on the search docs page.