Reindexing the catalogue

When it is worth forcing a complete indexing, where it is done, and what to do when the button does not finish.

On most days it is not needed. Price and stock arrive in seconds through real time, and the periodic sync goes over the catalogue on its own. This guide is for the times when a lot changed at once and you do not want to wait.

When it is worth it

• A large product import, done by CSV or straight into the database.
• A structural change: renaming categories, redoing features, changing the combination structure.
• After turning the sharing of sales or cost price on or off in the module.
• After changing the field weights, if you want to see the effect immediately instead of waiting for the rebuild that saving already asked for.

When it is not worth it Price, stock and status changes arrive through real time in seconds. Reindexing because of that spends time and changes nothing.

Where the button is

In the store back office, in the Buskara module configuration: Reindex everything. It is not in the panel, and that is on purpose: the catalogue belongs to the store, and that is where the export starts.

In the panel, under Search → Stores, you follow what is happening: Queued, Indexing… (sent / total) and finally Up to date, with the document total. An indexing started from the module button shows up there the same way.

What you see while it runs

The catalogue goes up in batches: the page asks for one piece at a time, shows the bar moving with the items already sent, and reloads with the result at the end. It works this way because a single request sending tens of thousands of products ran into the server's time limit, and what showed up was a Request Timeout with no explanation at all.

Keep the tab open until it finishes. If you close it halfway, whatever went up stays there and the rest goes in the next indexing, whether that is another click on the button or the periodic sync.

Without a browser, from the command line

For stores with many references, or to leave it running out of hours, the module ships the same work on the command line:

php modules/buskara/cli/reindex.php

It has no time limit at all and needs nobody in front of the screen.

What happens to search in the meantime

It keeps answering, with the previous index. The swap happens at the end: visitors never get results from the middle of a rebuild, nor half a catalogue.

If the total does not add up

Compare the engine's document total with the number of active products in the store. A difference is almost always one of these: products that are inactive or not visible in the store, the products out of stock: hide option doing exactly what it was asked to do, or an indexing that has not finished yet.

The complete list of causes, in order of likelihood, is in products that do not show up.