Algolia-indexing

This module abstract complex indexing operations under one simple command. Its goal is to use as few operations as possible when updating an index, by performing diff comparisons instead of a full delete/overwrite.

Starting from v1.0, this package is no longer officially maintained by Algolia but I, @pixelastic, took ownership.

Installation

Install through yarn:

yarn add algolia-indexing

Usage

const indexing = require('algolia-indexing');

const credentials = { appId: 'XXX', apiKey: 'YYY', indexName: 'my_index' };
const records = [{ foo: 'bar' }];
const settings = { searchableAttributes: ['foo'] };

await indexing.fullAtomic(credentials, records, settings);

This will update an index with new records and settings in an atomic way. It will be fast but will require a plan with a large number of records (as we'll need to duplicate the index for a short period of time).

How it works:

• Set a unique objectID to each record, based on its content
• Copy the production index to a temporary one
• Compare the new records and the existing records in the index
• Patch the temporary index by removing old records and adding new ones
• Overwrite production index with temporary one

.verbose()

By default, all methods are silent. By calling indexing.verbose(), you enable the display of some progress indicators.

Events

The module .pulse key emits events at different points in time. You can listen to them and react accordingly. Each event is fired with an object containing different information relative to the event that fired it.

const indexing = require('algolia-indexing');

indexing.pulse.on('copyIndex.start', ({ source, destination }) => {
  console.info(`Start moving ${source} to ${destination}`);
});
indexing.pulse.on('copyIndex.end', ({ source, destination }) => {
  console.info(`Finished moving ${source} to ${destination}`);
});

All events have a specific key called eventId that is unique and shared across events of the same origin. For example, a batch operation will emit batch.start when starting, batch.end when finished and a certain number of batch.chunk events depending on how large the batch is. All those events will share the same eventId.

Config

algolia-indexing has sensible default configuration, but allows you to turn knobs here and there.

The following table lists all the config keys and their default values. To change a config value, you need to call indexing.config({ keyToReplace: 'newValue' }).

Replicas

The settings.replicas key can be used to define all the replicas and their configuration. They, too, will be atomically updated on a new indexing.

const credentials = {
  // …
  indexName: 'products',
};
const records = [
  // …
];
const settings = {
  // …
  searchableAttributes: ['title'],
  customRanking: ['desc(date)', 'desc(score)'],
  replicas: {
    popularity: {
      customRanking: ['desc(score)', 'desc(date)'],
    },
  },
};
const indexing.fullAtomic(credentials, records, settings);

The above config will order results by date, then score on the main index, but will also create a products_popularity replica ordered by score, then date.