How to add Algolia InstantSearch to your Next.js application

The author of this article implemented search functionality on their blog using Algolia, a flexible hosted search and discovery API. They chose Algolia's free community plan and set up a custom script to transform and send data to the Algolia index. The script uses Node.js and async/await to fetch data from Contentful, transform it, and send it to Algolia. The author also used Algolia's React InstantSearch UI library to build a simple search box that displays search results when a search term is provided. They created custom components to give more control over the UI and CSS, and to only render the search results when there's a search query present in the input field.