While Drupal Views can work with SearchStax Site Search, UI Kits provide significant architectural and maintainability advantages. When you use Drupal Views, many Site Search features don't work or require extensive customization. That's because the Drupal View controls the search experience instead of SearchStax. The following sections describe the benefits of switching from Drupal Views to a UI Kit implementation.
Fewer Drupal Module Dependencies
When you use UI Kits, the Drupal setup requires the following modules:
When you use Drupal Views to deliver enhanced search experiences, many setups require some of the following additional modules:
This creates a more piecemeal search implementation, with more modules to maintain, update, and test. SearchStax doesn't support every Search API module or every option in those modules. Some modules might not be compatible with SearchStax, and some compatible modules might expose fewer options. For example, Search API Autocomplete doesn't expose every option when used with SearchStax.
Lower Search Request Utilization
UI Kits build a search page with a single search request for results, autosuggestions, facets, and spell check autocorrections.
With Drupal Views, a single search query can generate separate requests for results and facets. A Drupal autocomplete setup can also generate a separate search request for each keyword character that a user types. Depending on the setup and search features, one user query can generate twice as many search requests, or even 10 times as many. Consider this when you plan capacity against the search limits for your Site Search plan.
Faster Search Results Rendering
Drupal Views can piece together results from separate search requests for results, facets, and other Drupal module functionality. This can make search results load more slowly than a UI Kit implementation.
Reduced Load on the Drupal Server
Drupal Views routes search requests through the Drupal server before Drupal sends the Search API request to the Site Search app's search endpoint. High query volume can increase Drupal server processing, memory usage, or compute usage.
No Pipeline Deployment for Search Configurations
With UI Kits, you can test and publish search configuration changes, such as facets or search fields, across development and production apps without running an additional Drupal deployment pipeline.
This also lets search experience owners on your team manage changes without involving Drupal development resources.
Easy to Maintain and Style
SearchStax UI Kits are built on a headless architecture, giving you control over the HTML, CSS, and front-end experience. Unlike Drupal Views, which often require navigating complex configuration layers and theme overrides, UI Kits let your developers work with familiar front-end technologies. This can make customization, maintenance, and redesigns faster and easier.
SearchStax Support Guidance Available
SearchStax teams can review your search configuration in SearchStax and use Search Preview or the Hosted Search Page to help triage issues, even when the search page is internal and not open to the internet.
When teams use Drupal Views, search configuration is often managed outside Site Search. In those cases, SearchStax might be limited to guidance based on the Search API responses.
What's Next
Ready to implement UI Kits? Review the UI Kits tutorials for step-by-step implementation instructions.