email-search-engine

A full-text search UI for an indexed email corpus, backed by ZincSearch. Companion to indexer, which populates the ZincSearch index from a maildir-style tree.

Originally built around the Enron email corpus (~500k messages) — once indexer has ingested the dataset, this app lets you query it with paginated results and per-email detail views.

Architecture

indexer  ─────►  ZincSearch  ◄─────  back-end  ◄─────  front-end
(Go CLI)         (search DB)         (Go API)          (Vue 3 / TS / Tailwind)

• back-end/ — A small Go HTTP service (chi router) that proxies search queries to ZincSearch's /api/<index>/_search endpoint, normalizes the response, and returns hits + pagination metadata to the UI.
• front-end/ — A Vue 3 + TypeScript + Tailwind SPA with a search box, paginated results table, and an email detail panel. Built with Vue CLI Service.

The split keeps ZincSearch credentials out of the browser — the front-end never talks to the search DB directly.

Requirements

• Go 1.26+
• Node.js 18+
• A running ZincSearch instance with an index populated by indexer

Running locally

1. Back-end

cd back-end
cp .env.example .env   # fill in ZincSearch credentials
go run .

The server listens on PORT (default 3000).

Variable	Default	Purpose
PORT	3000	HTTP port for the API
ZINCSEARCH_URL	http://localhost:4080	Base URL of the ZincSearch instance
ZINCSEARCH_INDEX	emails	Target index name (must match the indexer's target)
ZINCSEARCH_USERNAME	""	ZincSearch admin user
ZINCSEARCH_PASSWORD	""	ZincSearch admin password

2. Front-end

cd front-end
cp .env.example .env   # set VUE_APP_SERVER_URL to the back-end's URL
npm install
npm run serve

Variable	Purpose
VUE_APP_SERVER_URL	Base URL of the back-end, e.g. http://localhost:3000

Then open http://localhost:8080.

Tests

# Back-end
cd back-end && go test ./...

# Front-end
cd front-end && npm test

License

MIT — see LICENSE.