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Search

The search functionality uses MeiliSearch.

Overview

There is the full-website search available everywhere by clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the top right-hand corner of a page, and a training-specific search on the training home page.

Full-website search

For the main search, all the indexed documents are stored under one index, studio. This name (the uid of the index) is defined in settings.py, in the MEILISEARCH_INDEX_UID variable. Two replica indexes are created and kept in sync with the main index: studio_date_asc and studio_date_desc. They are used for search results' alternative ordering.

The models that are 'searchable', i.e. added to the index, are:

  • films.Film - the published ones,
  • films.Asset - the published ones that belong to a published film,
  • training.Training - the published ones,
  • training.Section - belonging to a published training,
  • blog.Post - the published ones.

Training search

For the training search, there is a separate index training (TRAINING_INDEX_UID in settings.py). The searchable models are:

  • training.Training - the published ones,
  • training.Section - belonging to a published training,
  • films.Asset - only Production Lessons which are also published.

Indexing

Each document in any index needs to have a unique ID field. The field is called search_id and is generated based on the model and the object pk, e.g. film_1 for the film with pk=1.

Django signals take care of indexing new objects in the database or updating the existing ones on change: a post_save signal is attached to each of the above mentioned models. When an object is updated in the database, it is 'added' to the appropriate indexes with the same search_id, which means that no new document is created, only the existing one is updated.

On object deletion, the related document will be deleted from the index thanks to a pre_delete signal.

It is also possible to update the indexes with all the documents in the database using a Django management command:

./manage.py index_documents

For more details, see the command's --help or the search setup instructions.

Management commands

Two Django management commands are available:

  • create_search_indexes - creates a new 'main' index, with the uid MEILISEARCH_INDEX_UID, two replica indexes used for alternative search results ordering, and an index for the search in training. If the indexes already exists, the command only updates their settings to the values they are expected to have.
  • index_documents - adds documents from the database to all the indexes. If a document with a given search_id is already present in an index, it will be updated.

The commands can be run from the Bash console with the project's venv activated:

./manage.py create_search_indexes
./manage.py index_documents

Troubleshooting

If the search does not work as expected, it may be due to some index settings being out of date or the documents in the index being out of date.

Updating index settings

To update the indexes' settings - such as fields used for faceting, searchable fields, ranking rules etc. - run the create_search_indexes command. If the indexes exist, it does not create new ones, only resets their settings to the desired values.

./manage.py create_search_indexes

Recreating an index

Some settings (the index name, the index primary key field name) cannot be updated. If you need to change them, you have to delete the old index and create it again. Note that this will also delete all the indexed documents. An index can be deleted in a few ways, e.g.:

  1. In Bash console: 
    curl -X DELETE 'http://localhost:7700/indexes/studio'
  2. In Django shell (./manage.py shell): 
    import meilisearch
meilisearch.Client('http://localhost:7700').get_index('studio').delete()

Also note that usually you'll have to delete the replica indexes as well.

After deleting all the indexes, recreate and set them up by running:

./manage.py create_search_indexes

Updating indexed documents

If the data in the database or the documents' structure changes, run the index_documents command. It updates the existing documents (based on a matching search_id), so no duplicate documents should be added to the index.

./manage.py index_documents