šŸ” Algolia Search - New Plugin from Zeroqode

thanks @levon

In case others run into this, I just ran into some confusion where results werenā€™t returning from Algolia, despite following zeroqode/algolia documentation. I realized after some head-banging that you have to have the algolia index name in all lowercase.

ie
dev_IndexName wouldnā€™t work
but
dev_indexname would work

thanks! :slight_smile:

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Hi Eric,
thanks a lot for sharing this,
i have updated our doc making an explicit note about that
:pray:
Levon

I think the time has now come for Bubble to offer better search framework - why not recreate something like Algolia for Bubblers? Current implementation is poor and quickly becoming a pain point for us. Does anyone else feel this is the case?

3 Likes

hey @kenlaji!

We would appreciate if you could share more details about the pain points so we can address them in the current implementation as well.

What exactly does not work for you and how we can make it better?

Thanks a lot!

2 Likes

Well, searching through anything more than tens of records slows page loads and seriously degrades user experience. Our app has a calendar (Bubbleā€™s own plugin) that displays appointments. Customers with over 200 appointments a month has to wait several seconds to view them on the plugin. We tried constraining the search to just two weeks before current date and 3 months into the future, but still it takes ages.

Likewise, loading a user list on a dropdown menu to make an appointment hangs for ages when the client list currently contains some 400 records.

I gather searches are done in the browser and that delays every action on the page. App logs donā€™t suggest there is a need for increase in compute units.

I wish Bubble would address search as a priority :frowning:

We would appreciate if you can PM me the link to your app, or add support@zeroqode.com to collaborators so we can take a look, @kenlaji.

We have several instances of implementation of this plugin where we are searching trough\loading thousands and tens of thousands of records in seconds, or even miliseconds.

The demo link in the OP is a good example:

https://zeroqode-demo-11.bubbleapps.io/algolia_search

As you can see, weā€™re working with 9,5K record list here.

So searching trough 200 records should not be a problem if itā€™s indexed correctly in Algolia and your query does not depend on some other factor, like an un-optimized internal Bubble DB query.

Which means that we should probably improve our documentation for the plugin :slight_smile:

Anyways, can we take a look please?

Ok that seems an option. I am awaiting Bubble support to get back to me on a couple of things, then I shall be in touch. Meanwhile, can you let me know the process for indexing retrospectively (when there are already records that have not been indexed in the service). Also, the pricing could be better on Algolia!

Bubble should build a functionality like Algolia and make everyone shut up about search for good!

Awesome.

Hereā€™s a documentation link for you :slight_smile:
Look for Algolia - Update Object.

https://docs.zeroqode.com/plugins/algolia-search-plugin

In short - what you need is to run this action on all the items you need to be indexed (and thus - searchable) via Algolia. You can do it in bulk via API Workflow, for instance.

To be sure you got it all - I would just index everything you have, and then add a step to update Algolia index each time you add\change\delete an object within your app logic so that you donā€™t need to repeat it in bulk once done.

Amen to that :slight_smile:

Iā€™m sure they are on this already :slight_smile:

Until then - please do index your records, try to see if it works any better for you so that we can all have some nice-working search until Bubble team comes to the rescue :wink:

Cheers!

Thank you - brilliantly detailed reply. I will get on to this soon :slight_smile:

1 Like

@vladlarin please can you PM me? I have a few questions related to the plugin and its use which are not quite answered in the documentation.

Sure.

@levon Iā€™m currently using your plugin but I inserted in the admin api key to do updating. My question is, will it reveal the key somehow to the public?

@levon whatā€™s the difference between api key and x alogolia api key?

Hello, @linhduynguyen

The usage of Admin key is a secure way of updating/deleting & modifying objects.

X-Algolia Keys are for API Calls, these keys make modifying and deleting Algolia objects .
Api Keys are used for search only through Algolia objects.

Regards,
Zeroqode Team.

So if I put my admin key in X-Algolia Keys slot, It will be private? I canā€™t look at your pluginā€™s source code, so I canā€™t tell.

Hi @linhduynguyen

Sorry for a latey here. Yes, it will be private :slight_smile: .

Best,
ZQ Team.

We are looking to add a social feed similar to yours. Were you able to display images and index them in Algolia?

Hey how hard would it be to implement this for a Directory ish type app. I want to create almost like a sub reddit where people can search for users. As well as search for user title that they have posted.

Iā€™m having a hard time getting the geo search functionality to work. Are there any examples out there showing how this can be set up properly?

sure, here is a demo page, which you can use as an example (click on ā€œeditorā€ link in the header)

and this is the link to the docs
https://docs.zeroqode.com/plugins/algolia-search-plugin
hope this helps