Automated Synchronization

Introduction

By default, this plugin will ensure your WordPress content flagged for indexing stays in sync with Algolia.

We support the automatic synchronization of 3 types of content:

• Post Types,
• Taxonomies,
• Users.

Each content type has its own indexing flow.

Triggers

We try as much as possible to automate the indexing for you. That means that we listen for events like 'post was saved' to push the new data to Algolia.

We synchronize posts when:

• A post was created or updated,
• A post was deleted,
• The featured image was changed.

We synchronize taxonomy terms when:

• A term was created or updated,
• A term was deleted.

We synchronize users when:

• A user was created or updated,
• A term was deleted,
• A post was created or updated,
• A post was deleted.

Indexing Decision

The existence of an indexing task, does not necessarily mean that the data will be pushed to Algolia.

Indeed, before each post, term and user indexing, we decide if the item should be indexed or not. If it should, then we re-push the data for the item otherwise we remove it from the index.

Default decisions:

You can hook into the indexing decision making for searchable posts, posts, terms and users by using respectively the algolia_should_index_searchable_post, algolia_should_index_post, algolia_should_index_term and algolia_should_index_user filters.

Here is an example for filtering user indexing:

<?php
/**
 * @param bool $should_index
 * @param WP_User $user
 *
 * @return bool
 */
function filter_user( $should_index, $user ) {
    if ( false === $should_index ) {
        return false;
    }

    return $user->ID !== 1;
}

add_filter( 'algolia_should_index_user', 'filter_user', 10, 2 );

In the above example, User with ID 1 would never get indexed. This example is trivial, but at least gives you a quick overview on how to filter your items to index. Also note how we return false early on if the decision has already been taken to not index the content.

Another example to exclude posts from the searchable_posts index where the noindex option from the Yoast SEO plugin is set to "noindex"

<?php
/**
 * Don't index pages where the robot index option
 * in the Yoast SEO plugin is set to noindex.
 *
 * @param bool    $should_index
 * @param WP_Post $post
 *
 * @return bool
 */
function filter_post( $should_index, WP_Post $post )
{
    if ( false === $should_index ) {
        return false;
    }

    return get_post_meta($post->ID, '_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex', true) == 1 ? false : true;
}

// Hook into Algolia to manipulate the post that should be indexed.
add_filter( 'algolia_should_index_searchable_post', 'filter_post', 10, 2 );

Exclude post types from searchable_posts_index

In this example we exclude the page post type from the searchable_posts index.

<?php
/**
 * @param bool    $should_index
 * @param WP_Post $post
 *
 * @return bool
 */
function exclude_post_types( $should_index, WP_Post $post )
{
    // Add all post types you don't want to make searchable.
    $excluded_post_types = array( 'page' );
    if ( false === $should_index ) {
        return false;
    }

    return ! in_array( $post->post_type, $excluded_post_types, true );
}

// Hook into Algolia to manipulate the post that should be indexed.
add_filter( 'algolia_should_index_searchable_post', 'exclude_post_types', 10, 2 );

Add post type to searchable_posts_index

By default, the plugin will only index post types that are not flagged as excluded from search.

If you want to manually determine the post types you want to index, you can use the algolia_searchable_post_types filter:

add_filter( 'algolia_searchable_post_types', function( $post_types ) {
    $post_types[] = 'custom_post_type';

    return $post_types;
} );

Queue processing

Every time a change of your content is detected, see previous section, we synchronize the item.

You can disable automatic sychronization by removing all the watchers using the algolia_changes_watchers filter:

add_filter( 'algolia_changes_watchers', function() {
    return array();
} );