Build a semantic search engine with LangChain

Overview

Build a semantic search engine over a PDF with LangChain embeddings and vector stores. Use it to retrieve passages similar to a query, then plug the retriever into retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) or other LLM workflows.

This tutorial covers:

Create Document objects from a PDF.
Generate embeddings.
Load and split a PDF.
Index chunks in a vector store and query by similarity.
Wrap the store as a retriever.

The guide also includes a minimal RAG implementation on top of the search engine.

Concepts

This tutorial focuses on text retrieval and covers the following concepts:

Setup

Install dependencies

This tutorial reads a PDF using the pypdf package:

pip

pip install pypdf

conda

conda install pypdf -c conda-forge

uv

uv add pypdf

For more details, see the Installation guide.

Configure LangSmith

Many of the applications you build with LangChain will contain multiple steps with multiple invocations of LLM calls. As these applications get more and more complex, it becomes crucial to be able to inspect what exactly is going on inside your chain or agent. The best way to do this is with LangSmith.

After you sign up at the link above, make sure to set your environment variables to start logging traces:

export LANGSMITH_TRACING="true"
export LANGSMITH_API_KEY="..."

In a notebook, you can set them with:

import getpass
import os

os.environ["LANGSMITH_TRACING"] = "true"
os.environ["LANGSMITH_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass()

Create documents

LangChain implements a Document abstraction for a unit of text and associated metadata. It has three attributes:

page_content: a string representing the content.
metadata: a dict containing arbitrary metadata.
id: (optional) a string identifier for the document.

metadata can capture the source of the document, its relationship to other documents, and other information. An individual Document often represents a chunk of a larger document.

The following code creates sample documents:

from langchain_core.documents import Document

documents = [
    Document(
        page_content="Dogs are great companions, known for their loyalty and friendliness.",
        metadata={"source": "mammal-pets-doc"},
    ),
    Document(
        page_content="Cats are independent pets that often enjoy their own space.",
        metadata={"source": "mammal-pets-doc"},
    ),
]

Generate embeddings

Vector search stores numeric vectors associated with text. Embed a query as a vector of the same dimension, then use similarity metrics (such as cosine similarity) to find related text.

LangChain supports embeddings from many providers. Select a model to specify how text should be converted into a numeric vector:

OpenAI

pip install -U "langchain-openai"

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("OPENAI_API_KEY"):
    os.environ["OPENAI_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for OpenAI: ")

from langchain_openai import OpenAIEmbeddings

embeddings = OpenAIEmbeddings(model="text-embedding-3-large")

Azure

pip install -U "langchain-openai"

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY"):
    os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for Azure: ")

from langchain_openai import AzureOpenAIEmbeddings

embeddings = AzureOpenAIEmbeddings(
    azure_endpoint=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT"],
    azure_deployment=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_DEPLOYMENT_NAME"],
    openai_api_version=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_API_VERSION"],
)

Google Gemini

pip install -qU langchain-google-genai

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("GOOGLE_API_KEY"):
    os.environ["GOOGLE_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for Google Gemini: ")

from langchain_google_genai import GoogleGenerativeAIEmbeddings

embeddings = GoogleGenerativeAIEmbeddings(model="models/gemini-embedding-001")

Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform

pip install -qU langchain-google-vertexai

from langchain_google_vertexai import VertexAIEmbeddings

embeddings = VertexAIEmbeddings(model="text-embedding-005")

AWS

pip install -qU langchain-aws

from langchain_aws import BedrockEmbeddings

embeddings = BedrockEmbeddings(model_id="amazon.titan-embed-text-v2:0")

HuggingFace

pip install -qU langchain-huggingface

from langchain_huggingface import HuggingFaceEmbeddings

embeddings = HuggingFaceEmbeddings(
    model_name="sentence-transformers/all-mpnet-base-v2",
    encode_kwargs={"normalize_embeddings": True},
)

Ollama

pip install -qU langchain-ollama

from langchain_ollama import OllamaEmbeddings

embeddings = OllamaEmbeddings(model="llama3")

Cohere

pip install -qU langchain-cohere

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("COHERE_API_KEY"):
    os.environ["COHERE_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for Cohere: ")

from langchain_cohere import CohereEmbeddings

embeddings = CohereEmbeddings(model="embed-english-v3.0")

MistralAI

pip install -qU langchain-mistralai

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("MISTRALAI_API_KEY"):
    os.environ["MISTRALAI_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for MistralAI: ")

from langchain_mistralai import MistralAIEmbeddings

embeddings = MistralAIEmbeddings(model="mistral-embed")

Nomic

pip install -qU langchain-nomic

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("NOMIC_API_KEY"):
    os.environ["NOMIC_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for Nomic: ")

from langchain_nomic import NomicEmbeddings

embeddings = NomicEmbeddings(model="nomic-embed-text-v1.5")

NVIDIA

pip install -qU langchain-nvidia-ai-endpoints

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("NVIDIA_API_KEY"):
    os.environ["NVIDIA_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for NVIDIA: ")

from langchain_nvidia_ai_endpoints import NVIDIAEmbeddings

embeddings = NVIDIAEmbeddings(model="NV-Embed-QA")

Voyage AI

pip install -qU langchain-voyageai

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("VOYAGE_API_KEY"):
    os.environ["VOYAGE_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for Voyage AI: ")

from langchain-voyageai import VoyageAIEmbeddings

embeddings = VoyageAIEmbeddings(model="voyage-3")

IBM watsonx

pip install -qU langchain-ibm

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("WATSONX_APIKEY"):
    os.environ["WATSONX_APIKEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for IBM watsonx: ")

from langchain_ibm import WatsonxEmbeddings

embeddings = WatsonxEmbeddings(
    model_id="ibm/slate-125m-english-rtrvr",
    url="https://us-south.ml.cloud.ibm.com",
    project_id="<WATSONX PROJECT_ID>",
)

Fake

pip install -qU langchain-core

from langchain_core.embeddings import DeterministicFakeEmbedding

embeddings = DeterministicFakeEmbedding(size=4096)

Isaacus

pip install -qU langchain-isaacus

import getpass
import os

if not os.environ.get("ISAACUS_API_KEY"):
os.environ["ISAACUS_API_KEY"] = getpass.getpass("Enter API key for Isaacus: ")

from langchain_isaacus import IsaacusEmbeddings

embeddings = IsaacusEmbeddings(model="kanon-2-embedder")

vector_1 = embeddings.embed_query(documents[0].page_content)
vector_2 = embeddings.embed_query(documents[1].page_content)

assert len(vector_1) == len(vector_2)
print(f"Generated vectors of length {len(vector_1)}\n")
print(vector_1[:10])

Generated vectors of length 1536

[-0.008586574345827103, -0.03341241180896759, -0.008936782367527485, -0.0036674530711025, 0.010564599186182022, 0.009598285891115665, -0.028587326407432556, -0.015824200585484505, 0.0030416189692914486, -0.012899317778646946]

Next, store embeddings in a vector store that supports efficient similarity search.

Select a vector store

LangChain VectorStore objects add text and Document objects to a store and query them with similarity metrics. They are often initialized with embedding models that translate text into numeric vectors.

LangChain includes integrations with many vector store technologies. Some are hosted and need credentials, some run in separate infrastructure (local or third-party), and others run in-memory for lightweight workloads. Select a vector store:

In-memory

pip install -U "langchain-core"

from langchain_core.vectorstores import InMemoryVectorStore

vector_store = InMemoryVectorStore(embeddings)

Amazon OpenSearch

pip install -qU  boto3

from opensearchpy import RequestsHttpConnection

service = "es"  # must set the service as 'es'
region = "us-east-2"
credentials = boto3.Session(
    aws_access_key_id="xxxxxx", aws_secret_access_key="xxxxx"
).get_credentials()
awsauth = AWS4Auth("xxxxx", "xxxxxx", region, service, session_token=credentials.token)

vector_store = OpenSearchVectorSearch.from_documents(
    docs,
    embeddings,
    opensearch_url="host url",
    http_auth=awsauth,
    timeout=300,
    use_ssl=True,
    verify_certs=True,
    connection_class=RequestsHttpConnection,
    index_name="test-index",
)

AstraDB

pip install -U "langchain-astradb"

from langchain_astradb import AstraDBVectorStore

vector_store = AstraDBVectorStore(
    embedding=embeddings,
    api_endpoint=ASTRA_DB_API_ENDPOINT,
    collection_name="astra_vector_langchain",
    token=ASTRA_DB_APPLICATION_TOKEN,
    namespace=ASTRA_DB_NAMESPACE,
)

Chroma

pip install -qU langchain-chroma

from langchain_chroma import Chroma

vector_store = Chroma(
    collection_name="example_collection",
    embedding_function=embeddings,
    persist_directory="./chroma_langchain_db",  # Where to save data locally, remove if not necessary
)

Milvus

pip install -qU langchain-milvus

from langchain_milvus import Milvus

URI = "./milvus_example.db"

vector_store = Milvus(
    embedding_function=embeddings,
    connection_args={"uri": URI},
    index_params={"index_type": "FLAT", "metric_type": "L2"},
)

MongoDB

pip install -qU langchain-mongodb

from langchain_mongodb import MongoDBAtlasVectorSearch

vector_store = MongoDBAtlasVectorSearch(
    embedding=embeddings,
    collection=MONGODB_COLLECTION,
    index_name=ATLAS_VECTOR_SEARCH_INDEX_NAME,
    relevance_score_fn="cosine",
)

PGVector

pip install -qU langchain-postgres

from langchain_postgres import PGVector

vector_store = PGVector(
    embeddings=embeddings,
    collection_name="my_docs",
    connection="postgresql+psycopg://...",
)

PGVectorStore

pip install -qU langchain-postgres

from langchain_postgres import PGEngine, PGVectorStore

pg_engine = PGEngine.from_connection_string(
    url="postgresql+psycopg://..."
)

vector_store = PGVectorStore.create_sync(
    engine=pg_engine,
    table_name='test_table',
    embedding_service=embeddings
)

Pinecone

pip install -qU langchain-pinecone

from langchain_pinecone import PineconeVectorStore
from pinecone import Pinecone

pc = Pinecone(api_key=...)
index = pc.Index(index_name)

vector_store = PineconeVectorStore(embedding=embeddings, index=index)

Qdrant

pip install -qU langchain-qdrant

from qdrant_client.models import Distance, VectorParams
from langchain_qdrant import QdrantVectorStore
from qdrant_client import QdrantClient

client = QdrantClient(":memory:")

vector_size = len(embeddings.embed_query("sample text"))

if not client.collection_exists("test"):
    client.create_collection(
        collection_name="test",
        vectors_config=VectorParams(size=vector_size, distance=Distance.COSINE)
    )
vector_store = QdrantVectorStore(
    client=client,
    collection_name="test",
    embedding=embeddings,
)

Load and split a PDF

Load content from a PDF, then split it into smaller chunks before indexing. This example uses a sample Nike 10-K filing from 2023.

For dedicated PDF document loaders (including PyPDFLoader and partner packages), see PDF document loaders.

import pypdf
from langchain_core.documents import Document


# Below is a minimal helper for demonstration purposes.
def load_pdf_pages(file_path: str) -> list[Document]:
    reader = pypdf.PdfReader(file_path)
    return [
        Document(
            page_content=page.extract_text() or "",
            metadata={"source": file_path, "page": i},
        )
        for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages)
    ]


file_path = "../example_data/nke-10k-2023.pdf"
docs = load_pdf_pages(file_path)
print(len(docs))

A page is often too coarse for retrieval. Split pages further so relevant passages are not diluted by surrounding text. RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter recursively splits on common separators (such as newlines) until each chunk is the target size. This is the recommended text splitter for generic text use cases.

Set add_start_index=True so each split keeps a start_index metadata field for its character offset in the original document.

from langchain_text_splitters import RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter

text_splitter = RecursiveCharacterTextSplitter(
    chunk_size=1000, chunk_overlap=200, add_start_index=True
)
all_splits = text_splitter.split_documents(docs)

print(len(all_splits))

Index documents

Index the chunks into the vector store:

ids = vector_store.add_documents(documents=all_splits)

Most vector store integrations also support connecting to an existing store (for example with a client or index name). See the docs for a specific integration for details.

Query the vector store

After you have added the documents to the VectorStore, you can query it:

Synchronously and asynchronously
By string query and by vector
With and without similarity scores
By similarity and maximum marginal relevance (to balance similarity with diversity)

These methods generally return a list of Document objects.

Search by string

Embeddings map text to dense vectors so similar meanings are geometrically close. This means you can Retrieve relevant passages by passing a natural-language question:

results = vector_store.similarity_search(
    "How many distribution centers does Nike have in the US?"
)

print(results[0])

page_content='direct to consumer operations sell products through the following number of retail stores in the United States:
U.S. RETAIL STORES NUMBER
NIKE Brand factory stores 213
NIKE Brand in-line stores (including employee-only stores) 74
Converse stores (including factory stores) 82
TOTAL 369
In the United States, NIKE has eight significant distribution centers. Refer to Item 2. Properties for further information.
2023 FORM 10-K 2' metadata={'page': 4, 'source': '../example_data/nke-10k-2023.pdf', 'start_index': 3125}

Async query:

results = await vector_store.asimilarity_search("When was Nike incorporated?")

print(results[0])

page_content='Table of Contents
PART I
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
GENERAL
NIKE, Inc. was incorporated in 1967 under the laws of the State of Oregon. As used in this Annual Report on Form 10-K (this "Annual Report"), the terms "we," "us," "our,"
"NIKE" and the "Company" refer to NIKE, Inc. and its predecessors, subsidiaries and affiliates, collectively, unless the context indicates otherwise.
Our principal business activity is the design, development and worldwide marketing and selling of athletic footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. NIKE is
the largest seller of athletic footwear and apparel in the world. We sell our products through NIKE Direct operations, which are comprised of both NIKE-owned retail stores
and sales through our digital platforms (also referred to as "NIKE Brand Digital"), to retail accounts and to a mix of independent distributors, licensees and sales' metadata={'page': 3, 'source': '../example_data/nke-10k-2023.pdf', 'start_index': 0}

Return scores

You can return similarity scores with the documents. Score meaning varies by provider. In this case, the score is a distance metric that varies inversely with similarity:

# Note that providers implement different scores; the score here
# is a distance metric that varies inversely with similarity.

results = vector_store.similarity_search_with_score("What was Nike's revenue in 2023?")
doc, score = results[0]
print(f"Score: {score}\n")
print(doc)

Score: 0.23699893057346344

page_content='Table of Contents
FISCAL 2023 NIKE BRAND REVENUE HIGHLIGHTS
The following tables present NIKE Brand revenues disaggregated by reportable operating segment, distribution channel and major product line:
FISCAL 2023 COMPARED TO FISCAL 2022
•NIKE, Inc. Revenues were $51.2 billion in fiscal 2023, which increased 10% and 16% compared to fiscal 2022 on a reported and currency-neutral basis, respectively.
The increase was due to higher revenues in North America, Europe, Middle East & Africa ("EMEA"), APLA and Greater China, which contributed approximately 7, 6,
2 and 1 percentage points to NIKE, Inc. Revenues, respectively.
•NIKE Brand revenues, which represented over 90% of NIKE, Inc. Revenues, increased 10% and 16% on a reported and currency-neutral basis, respectively. This
increase was primarily due to higher revenues in Men's, the Jordan Brand, Women's and Kids' which grew 17%, 35%,11% and 10%, respectively, on a wholesale
equivalent basis.' metadata={'page': 35, 'source': '../example_data/nke-10k-2023.pdf', 'start_index': 0}

Search by vector

Embed the query yourself, then search with the resulting vector:

embedding = embeddings.embed_query("How were Nike's margins impacted in 2023?")

results = vector_store.similarity_search_by_vector(embedding)
print(results[0])

page_content='Table of Contents
GROSS MARGIN
FISCAL 2023 COMPARED TO FISCAL 2022
For fiscal 2023, our consolidated gross profit increased 4% to $22,292 million compared to $21,479 million for fiscal 2022. Gross margin decreased 250 basis points to
43.5% for fiscal 2023 compared to 46.0% for fiscal 2022 due to the following:
*Wholesale equivalent
The decrease in gross margin for fiscal 2023 was primarily due to:
•Higher NIKE Brand product costs, on a wholesale equivalent basis, primarily due to higher input costs and elevated inbound freight and logistics costs as well as
product mix;
•Lower margin in our NIKE Direct business, driven by higher promotional activity to liquidate inventory in the current period compared to lower promotional activity in
the prior period resulting from lower available inventory supply;
•Unfavorable changes in net foreign currency exchange rates, including hedges; and
•Lower off-price margin, on a wholesale equivalent basis.
This was partially offset by:' metadata={'page': 36, 'source': '../example_data/nke-10k-2023.pdf', 'start_index': 0}

Learn more:

API Reference
Integration-specific docs

Use retrievers

LangChain VectorStore objects do not subclass Runnable. Retrievers are Runnables, so they support standard methods such as sync and async invoke and batch.

You can also build retrievers from vector stores, and retrievers can also wrap non-vector sources (such as external APIs).

In this case, create a simple retriever without subclassing Retriever by wrapping similarity_search:

from typing import List

from langchain_core.documents import Document
from langchain_core.runnables import chain


@chain
def retriever(query: str) -> List[Document]:
    return vector_store.similarity_search(query, k=1)


retriever.batch(
    [
        "How many distribution centers does Nike have in the US?",
        "When was Nike incorporated?",
    ],
)

[[Document(metadata={'page': 4, 'source': '../example_data/nke-10k-2023.pdf', 'start_index': 3125}, page_content='direct to consumer operations sell products through the following number of retail stores in the United States:\nU.S. RETAIL STORES NUMBER\nNIKE Brand factory stores 213 \nNIKE Brand in-line stores (including employee-only stores) 74 \nConverse stores (including factory stores) 82 \nTOTAL 369 \nIn the United States, NIKE has eight significant distribution centers. Refer to Item 2. Properties for further information.\n2023 FORM 10-K 2')],
 [Document(metadata={'page': 3, 'source': '../example_data/nke-10k-2023.pdf', 'start_index': 0}, page_content='Table of Contents\nPART I\nITEM 1. BUSINESS\nGENERAL\nNIKE, Inc. was incorporated in 1967 under the laws of the State of Oregon. As used in this Annual Report on Form 10-K (this "Annual Report"), the terms "we," "us," "our,"\n"NIKE" and the "Company" refer to NIKE, Inc. and its predecessors, subsidiaries and affiliates, collectively, unless the context indicates otherwise.\nOur principal business activity is the design, development and worldwide marketing and selling of athletic footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. NIKE is\nthe largest seller of athletic footwear and apparel in the world. We sell our products through NIKE Direct operations, which are comprised of both NIKE-owned retail stores\nand sales through our digital platforms (also referred to as "NIKE Brand Digital"), to retail accounts and to a mix of independent distributors, licensees and sales')]]

Vector stores implement an as_retriever method that returns a VectorStoreRetriever. These retrievers expose search_type and search_kwargs to select and parameterize the underlying store methods. Replicate the example above with:

retriever = vector_store.as_retriever(
    search_type="similarity",
    search_kwargs={"k": 1},
)

retriever.batch(
    [
        "How many distribution centers does Nike have in the US?",
        "When was Nike incorporated?",
    ],
)

[[Document(metadata={'page': 4, 'source': '../example_data/nke-10k-2023.pdf', 'start_index': 3125}, page_content='direct to consumer operations sell products through the following number of retail stores in the United States:\nU.S. RETAIL STORES NUMBER\nNIKE Brand factory stores 213 \nNIKE Brand in-line stores (including employee-only stores) 74 \nConverse stores (including factory stores) 82 \nTOTAL 369 \nIn the United States, NIKE has eight significant distribution centers. Refer to Item 2. Properties for further information.\n2023 FORM 10-K 2')],
 [Document(metadata={'page': 3, 'source': '../example_data/nke-10k-2023.pdf', 'start_index': 0}, page_content='Table of Contents\nPART I\nITEM 1. BUSINESS\nGENERAL\nNIKE, Inc. was incorporated in 1967 under the laws of the State of Oregon. As used in this Annual Report on Form 10-K (this "Annual Report"), the terms "we," "us," "our,"\n"NIKE" and the "Company" refer to NIKE, Inc. and its predecessors, subsidiaries and affiliates, collectively, unless the context indicates otherwise.\nOur principal business activity is the design, development and worldwide marketing and selling of athletic footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories and services. NIKE is\nthe largest seller of athletic footwear and apparel in the world. We sell our products through NIKE Direct operations, which are comprised of both NIKE-owned retail stores\nand sales through our digital platforms (also referred to as "NIKE Brand Digital"), to retail accounts and to a mix of independent distributors, licensees and sales')]]

VectorStoreRetriever supports search types of "similarity" (default), "mmr" (maximum marginal relevance), and "similarity_score_threshold". Use the last option to filter documents by similarity score.

You can use retrievers in more complex apps such as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which combine a question with retrieved context in a prompt for an LLM. To learn more about building such an application, check out the RAG tutorial tutorial.

Next steps

You’ve now seen how to build a semantic search engine over a PDF document.

For more information see:

For more on RAG:

Install LangChain Long-term memory