Vertex AI Search

The initial focus of this module is to provide search capabilities using Vertex AI Search that are commensurate with the search capabilities currently provided by the Google Programmable Search Engine using the google_json_api module.

On December 18, 2024, the Site Restricted JSON API endpoint that is used for communication with the Programmable Search Engine solution will no longer serve traffic. Google recommends that websites using the Site Restricted JSON API move to Vertex AI Search. Drupal websites that currently use the google_json_api module with the Site Restricted JSON API can move to the Vertex AI Search feature using this module (vertex_ai_search).

Websites that use the Drupal google_json_api module with the standard JSON API can continue to do so. Only the Site Restricted JSON API endpoint will cease to operate.

Vertex AI Search provides more functional opportunities than the Programmable Search Engine. While the initial focus of this module is to provide a roughly-equivalent alternative to the search experience provided by the google_json_api module, it will evolve to support more of the Vertex AI Search features.

Features

There are three basic data store types that can be used with a Vertex AI Search App: Website, Structured, and Unstructured.

The initial scope of this module will only consider features available to Search Apps using the Enterprise Edition and a Website data store with basic indexing.

Features that require Advanced Website Indexing and/or Advanced LLM features are not initially in scope.

• Integrates with Drupal Core Search.
• Uses Google Cloud Discovery Engine Client Library.
• Configurable search results page presentation.
• Service Account authentication with GCP.

Additional Requirements

This module depends on the Google Cloud Discovery Engine Client Library for PHP. It can be installed via composer: composer require google/cloud-discoveryengine

This module also depends on the following drupal modules:

• Core Search
• Token

Recommended modules/libraries

• Vertex AI Search Promoted Results: The Programmable Search Engine control panel allowed for the creation of promoted results that would appear at the top of search results for a given search keyword. To emulate this functionality using Vertex AI Search, the Vertex AI Search Promoted Results module was developed.

Similar projects

The Google JSON API module is similar to this module in terms of implementation. Both modules provide a plugin that supports the creation of a search page using a third-party engine.

If currently using the Google JSON API module, the Vertex AI Search module provides a path to using Vertex AI Search once the Site-Restricted JSON API is disabled on December 18, 2024.