🔍 Omnisearch: Integrate Algolia, Typesense, and friends

[mikolaj]

Total capacity field wouldn’t work because the value is dynamic, influenced by availability, which is managed separately and depends on the selected dates and other users’ bookings.

@zelus_pudding

Yet another solution is that I’m working on creating an Omnisearch element that can return records straight from Algolia/Typesense (unlike our current element which uses Algolia/Typesense to perform the search and then fetches the matched records from Bubble).

That would work for our use case! It’d be great to have an ‘advanced’ element like you’ve described that allows for more complex setup

[rodrig.naska]

Hi @zelus_pudding I am getting the same error even though I have deleted the relevant workflows. However, in my Cloud Typesense, I have 3 nodes – might that be the problem as I can only input one in the plugin settings?

[zelus_pudding]

Hey Rod!
You can actually specify the number of Typesense nodes in Omnisearch and we auto determine the relevant URLs for the remaining nodes based on the base node url you provided. So I don’t believe that’s the issue - just make sure you have 3 set as the number.

Instead, if you’re seeing an admin alert toast on your sync admin template, that’s likely because there is still at least one condition that wasn’t removed from your sync admin template. Please give another look through those template prep instructions provided here. If you’re still experiencing the issue, then DM me to setup a time to review via video chat.

[alcatravis]

Hi, we have implemented Typesense with Scious plugin and works very well.
We have multiple collections across different data types.
Is it possible to search from bubble across those different data types/collections.
e.g. we have

• items
• customers
• jobs

can I search from one box across all 3 and return different bubble data types (things) ?

[zelus_pudding]

Hey Alcatravis! Thanks again for trying us out and entrusting us with your search

Answer is yes! You can search multiple data types at the same time with one search input. To do this, you’ll simply setup additional Omnisearch visual elements - one for each data type you want to search. Be sure to set the Search query input to the same Typing Trigger output, and you’ll be good to go!

[alcatravis]

Thanks. I can see how that works with setting up different repeating groups for each omnisearch element. But is there a way to have a single repeating group with the different data types returned in one list? e.g. a single list that includes

• items
• jobs
• customers

[zelus_pudding]

Unfortunately there isn’t That is, after all, a limitation of Repeating Groups themselves.

Visually speaking, though, you can create the illusion that they’re in the same “frame/card” by combining those multiple repeating groups into one card. Take for example the following UI design… In this one, there are headings between each repeating group but you could remove those to make the results look more seamless.

[arnaud.ledoeuff22]

Hi,

I currently struggle to facet fields with the action “Sync seach index”.

Note:

• I can facet field that is not a datatypes
• I can facet datatypes field from typesense/Collection settings

Have you ever meet this pb?

Have a nice day
Arnaud

[zelus_pudding]

Hey Arnaud! Out of curiosity, did you get a chance to review how we sync facets in our admin-sync-template (a preview of which is here)?

Here’s how we do it in that template (although you can name the fields directly without having to join a list (if you know the columns you want to sync )):

The capitalization of your field names matters, so ensure those are spelled exactly right

[marcus5]

Dear @zelus_pudding ,

I am having an issue with retrieving facet values as date formats in Typsense. Since facet values are stored as integers, when retrieved, they are returned as text. However, to correctly display these values as dates, we need to convert them from integers to date formats.

This is not an issue with search results, as they are retrieved directly from the Bubble database. I was wondering if there is a way to parse the integers returned as facet values to dates, so they can be formatted correctly.

Thanks in advance

[zelus_pudding]

Hey Marcus, thank you for your message!

That’s an interesting use case. There’s two ways we could go about this:

1. You can parse the outputs using something like the Expression visual element from the Toolbox plugin.
   • Pros: Can return the date as an actual date data type (instead of a text) which unlocks all the benefits of the Bubble editor knowing that thing is a date (i.e. being able to do date math/easily change the display format)
   • Cons: You’ll have to create the expression element… that either returns a single date (when existing in a repeating group) OR returns a list of dates (when making an expression that operates on the whole list of facet results). Not the biggest con but it takes some coding.
2. I could auto-detect when Typesense facet values are dates and auto convert those to the string representation of said dates.
   • Pros: You get the facet date values returned as text already converted into the ISO 8601 format (like YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ss.sssZ).
   • Cons: The ISO 8601 format is a text datatype, so you would probably still have to convert the text to a proper date thing using something like the Expression element to easily change display formatting.

What are you partial to?

[arnaud.ledoeuff22]

I know exactly the field to sync.
I take care of the capitalization.

I try to do like your demo → and it fail, that’s weird

[zelus_pudding]

@arnaud.ledoeuff22 , to be clear, when you facet by a custom Bubble type - which is what you’re trying to do - the results you get will be a list of that datatype’s Bubble IDs as text (and the facet counts for each). The GetFacets visual element will not return this as anything other than a list of unique_ids as text - so it won’t be a list of that datatype’s things which can be easily used in the Bubble editor.

As a result, if you would like to present the Bubble records associated with the unique_ids returned by the GetFacets visual element, then you will need to Do a search for where you filter by those ids. That way, you could then easily work with/display any data associated with that custom type.

Does that make sense for your use case?

If so, I’ve identified an improvement we can make to fix this for ya. I could implement this and test for release by Monday. Let me know if it’s what you need. Thank you,