title: Laravel search engine
body: <p>I am building a REST api using Laravel for a mobile app. And now I need a search engine.</p>
  
  <p>First off, I have never used any search engine. So I am looking for one thats simple to work with but still good at fulltext searching and filtering "where"</p>
  
  <p>The table I want to perform searches on has 1 column (varchar45) that needs to be search by fulltext search, and then there is 5 columns (int) thats used to filter using a "where" statement.- Using the mysql approach. I also perform a inner join on that table in order to print out some other stuff when generating the result.</p>
  
  <p>So I looked at <strong>sphinx</strong> and <strong>Elasticsearch</strong>, and decided to go with <strong>ES</strong>.</p>
  
  <p>I have watched the ES intro form Laracon: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waTWeJeFp4A" rel="noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waTWeJeFp4A</a></p>
  
  <p>and I also took a look at this package: <a href="https://github.com/freekmurze/searchindex" rel="noreferrer">https://github.com/freekmurze/searchindex</a></p>
  
  <p>That left me with a few questions:</p>
  
  <p><strong>1)</strong> Do I drop my mysql DB and just store <strong>ALL</strong> my data in ES?</p>
  
  <p><strong>2)</strong> If 1-yes, can I still use my mysql DB and just use ES to store indexes? - Since I only have to perform a search on one table (search a total of 5 rows).</p>
  
  <p><strong>3</strong> If 2-yes, Do I still keep my current indexes in my mysql table? Eg, fulltext index on title column, FK on another column and index on 3 others.</p>
  
  <p><strong>4</strong> Since this is the first time I ever use a search engine, is there any other tutorial/book/snippet out there on how to use <strong>ES with Laravel</strong>?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance</p>