New in ghost-meilisearch: Deploy Your Webhook with Cloudflare Workers

I am excited to announce a significant enhancement to ghost-meilisearch - our powerful search integration for Ghost blogs. With this update, you can now deploy the webhook handler component using Cloudflare Workers in addition to the existing Netlify Functions deployment option. This expanded flexibility gives you more choices for your infrastructure and potentially better global performance.

What is ghost-meilisearch?

For those new to the project, ghost-meilisearch is an open-source tool that adds fast, powerful search capabilities to your Ghost blog by integrating with Meilisearch, a lightning-fast search engine. It works by indexing your Ghost content into Meilisearch and providing a modern, responsive search experience for your readers.

The system consists of two main components:

A CLI tool for initial indexing of your content
A webhook handler that keeps your search index in sync when you publish, update, or delete posts

Until now, the webhook handler component could only be deployed to Netlify Functions. With this update, you can now choose between Netlify Functions and Cloudflare Workers, giving you more flexibility in your deployment strategy.

Why Cloudflare Workers?

Feature	Netlify Functions	Cloudflare Workers
Request Volume	125,000 requests per month (free tier)	100,000 requests per day (~3M/month) with 1,000 requests/minute rate limit
Memory Allocation	1024 MB (1 GB) per function	128 MB for both free and paid tiers
Execution Time Limit	10 seconds per function (26s for background functions)	Free tier: 10ms CPU time<br>Paid tier: 30s for HTTP requests, 15min for Cron Triggers
Monthly Runtime	100 hours combined runtime across all functions	No combined monthly runtime limit
Cold Starts	Yes (Lambda-based)	No cold starts
Geographic Distribution	Limited AWS regions	300+ global edge locations
Environment	Node.js, Go	JavaScript, WebAssembly, TypeScript
Storage Options	Limited integrations	Durable Objects, KV, R2 Storage
Development Experience	Simple CLI deployment	Wrangler CLI with robust local testing

Cloudflare Workers offers several advantages that might make it a better choice for some users:

Global Distribution: Cloudflare Workers run on Cloudflare's edge network with 300+ locations worldwide, potentially offering lower latency than Netlify Functions
Better Free Tier: Cloudflare's free tier includes 100,000 requests per day, which is generous for most small to medium-sized blogs
No Cold Starts: Unlike Netlify Functions (which are based on AWS Lambda), Cloudflare Workers don't have "cold start" delays
Existing Cloudflare Users: If you're already using Cloudflare for your site, integrating Workers makes your infrastructure more cohesive

How to Deploy with Cloudflare Workers

The updated documentation provides two methods for deploying to Cloudflare Workers:

Option A: Quick Deploy (Recommended)

Fork the ghost-meilisearch repository
Click the "Deploy with Workers" button in the repository README

Configure these environment variables in the Cloudflare Dashboard:

GHOST_URL=https://your-ghost-blog.com
GHOST_KEY=your-content-api-key
GHOST_VERSION=v5.0
MEILISEARCH_HOST=https://your-meilisearch-host.com
MEILISEARCH_API_KEY=your-master-api-key
MEILISEARCH_INDEX_NAME=ghost_posts
WEBHOOK_SECRET=your-secret-key

Option B: Manual Deploy

For those who prefer more control or need to customize the deployment:

Update your wrangler.toml (if needed)

Build and deploy:

npm install
npm run build
wrangler deploy

Add your environment variables securely using the Wrangler CLI:

wrangler secret put GHOST_URL
wrangler secret put GHOST_KEY
wrangler secret put GHOST_VERSION
wrangler secret put MEILISEARCH_HOST
wrangler secret put MEILISEARCH_API_KEY
wrangler secret put MEILISEARCH_INDEX_NAME
wrangler secret put WEBHOOK_SECRET

Clone your fork and navigate to the webhook handler:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/ghost-meilisearch.git
cd ghost-meilisearch/apps/webhook-handler

Install Wrangler CLI:

npm install -g wrangler

Your worker will be deployed to: https://ghost-meilisearch-webhook.[your-subdomain].workers.dev

Setting Up Webhooks in Ghost

After deploying your webhook handler (either to Netlify or Cloudflare Workers), you'll need to configure Ghost to send post events to it:

Go to Settings → Integrations in your Ghost Admin
Create or select a Custom Integration
Give it a name (e.g., "Meilisearch Search")
Add these webhooks:

Event	Target URL
Post published	`https://your-cloudflare-worker-url`
Post updated	`https://your-cloudflare-worker-url`
Post deleted	`https://your-cloudflare-worker-url`
Post unpublished	`https://your-cloudflare-worker-url`

Technical Implementation Details

For the technically curious, we've implemented the Cloudflare Worker in a way that parallels our existing Netlify function but takes advantage of Cloudflare's environment:

Uses the Web Crypto API for webhook signature verification
Implements proper timeout handling for API calls
Handles all the same Ghost webhook events (published, updated, deleted, unpublished)
Uses ES modules format required by Cloudflare Workers

The implementation carefully handles webhook verification to ensure that only legitimate requests from your Ghost instance are processed.

Which Option Should You Choose?

Both Netlify Functions and Cloudflare Workers are excellent services, but here are some considerations to help you decide:

Choose Netlify Functions if:

You're already hosting your site on Netlify
You prefer a simpler deployment process
You have an existing Netlify account and are familiar with its interface

Choose Cloudflare Workers if:

You want potentially lower global latency
You're already using Cloudflare for other services
You need more generous free tier limits
Cold start performance is important to you

Getting Started

To get started with ghost-meilisearch using either deployment option, visit the ghost-meilisearch repository.

Conclusion

The addition of Cloudflare Workers support makes ghost-meilisearch more flexible and potentially more performant for global audiences. We're excited to see how this new deployment option helps Ghost blog owners provide better search experiences for their readers.

I welcome feedback and contributions to the project. If you encounter any issues or have suggestions for improvements, please open an issue on the GitHub repository. And if this project can really help you, please consider buy me a coffee, even just a small amount can hugely encourage me on keeping improving the open-sourced projects.

Happy searching!

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