We’re pleased to announce the release of Fess 15.7.0.
This release introduces a unified /api/v2 REST API for headless and single-page-application frontends, and a new static theme system that lets you build search screens entirely from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — shipped with a bundled Bootstrap 5 reference theme. It also updates the search engine to OpenSearch 3.7.
Highlights
- Unified /api/v2 REST API — A single, consistent API surface replaces the legacy per-feature REST managers, with a unified JSON envelope covering search, scroll, related queries/content, document cache, favorites, click logging, authentication, UI config, and chat (POST and SSE streaming). It ships with an OpenAPI contract and is hardened with input bounds, mandatory CSRF, and per-IP / per-user rate limiting.
- Static Theme System (HTML / CSS / JS Search UI) — Deliver search screens as self-contained HTML/CSS/JavaScript bundles served directly from the web tier, validated against a theme.yml manifest and installable by ZIP upload. A new Admin → Theme screen lets you upload, activate, set a default, and remove themes.
- Bundled Bootstrap Reference Theme — A complete Bootstrap 5 reference theme (vanilla ES2022 modules) reproduces the existing search UI — home, search with facets, advanced search, cached view, AI chat, profile, and help — across 16 languages. Use it directly or as a starting point for your own frontend.
- OpenSearch 3.7 Support — Fess is now compatible with OpenSearch 3.7, with the bundled kopf plugin updated to 15.7.0.
API v2 Migration
The legacy v1 JSON search and chat APIs have been removed and replaced by the new /api/v2 surface. If you depend on the previous v1 search API, install the new fess-webapp-v1-api (GitHub - codelibs/fess-webapp-v1-api · GitHub) plugin to restore it.
Release Notes: Release Fess 15.7.0 · codelibs/fess · GitHub
Docker Image: Package fess · GitHub
Documentation: https://fess.codelibs.org/
Community Forum: https://discuss.codelibs.org/
Thank you for using Fess!