Timestamps in search

[anatintescu]

Hi all! I've just integrated strapi-plugin-meilisearch "^0.3.2" in my blog app (with fe in NextJs; in FE I use"meilisearch": "^0.19.0"). I want to impleement the search in my Article entity. Is there a way I can make the search method return also the auto-generated timestamps from Strapi (created_at, published_at)? I tried to specify these fields in the displayedAttributes , but it doesn't work. Thanks!

[bidoubiwa]

It is absolutely possible. They are voluntarily removed because I thought they would not be necessary. But lets put them back.

If someone wants to implement it, I can help.

[atintescu]

@bidoubiwa ,could you help me add them?

[CaroFG]

Hi! I've had feedback from users who want to be able to use the sortBy with the created_at, updated_at and published_at fields, maybe we should consider transforming those fields into timestamps too? WDYT?

@atintescu from what I see, all the logic is in the ./services/http.js file  🙂

[bidoubiwa]

(sorry I was on vacation)

Hi! I've had feedback from users who want to be able to use the sortBy with the created_at, updated_at and published_at fields, maybe we should consider transforming those fields into timestamps too? WDYT?

I don't think it is a good idea to change the format of the data before sending it to MeiliSearch. User's might want to keep it in their original form. A solution to that is the user creating its own created_at_timestamp where he converts created_at when it is being updated. This is possible using lifecycles hooks.

@bidoubiwa ,could you help me add them?

@anatintescu About the PR requests, to make the changes you should remove the following lines from http.js

// remove the whole function
function removeDateLogs(document) {
  const {
    updated_at: omitUpdatedAt,
    created_at: omitCreatedAt,
    created_by: omitCreatedBy,
    updated_by: omitUpdatedBy,
    published_at: omitPublishedAt,
    ...noDateLogDocument
  } = document
  return noDateLogDocument 
}

async function addDocuments({ indexUid, data }) {
  const noDateLogDocuments = data.map(document => removeDateLogs(document)) // remove
  return this.client.index(indexUid).addDocuments(noDateLogDocuments)
}

For the other parts of the contribution: making the pr, etc.. here is a guide on how to do so 😊.

If you have any question about how to contribute feel free to come and talk to me on our slack (link is in the upper right part of the docs).

[harish2704]

PR #265 allow us to take full control over what is to be sent to search engine for indexing .
This way , we can address these kind of issues without changing hard-coded default behavior

[bidoubiwa]

Thanks to @harish2704 it will become possible to choose your fields by adding a transformer to your collection so that you can change the data before sending it to MeiliSearch.

See #287

example in the restaurant collection.

// api/restaurant/models/restaurant.js

// Returns timestamp
function dateToTimeStamp(date) {
  const dateInstance = new Date(date)
  return dateInstance.getTime()
}

module.exports = {
  meilisearch: {
    transformEntry(entry) {
      const transformedEntry = {
        ...entry,
        // transform date format to timestamp
        // 2021-03-03T12:09:10.979Z => 1614773350979
        created_by: dateToTimeStamp(entry.created_by),
        updated_by: dateToTimeStamp(entry.updated_by),
      }
      return transformedEntry
    },
  },
}

It will be available next release!