Search Engine & Full-Text
Priority: P1 (OPERATIONAL)
Full-text search implementation with Elasticsearch and database patterns.
- •Pattern: CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation).
- •Write: To Primary Database (Postgres/MySQL). Source of Truth.
- •Read (Complex): To Search Engine (Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, MeiliSearch). Optimized for filtering, fuzzy search, and aggregation.
Synchronization (The Hard Part)
- •Dual Write (Anti-Pattern):
await db.save(); await es.index();.- •Why: Partial failures leave data inconsistent. Slows down HTTP response.
- •Event-Driven (Recommended):
- •Service writes to DB.
- •Service emits
EntityUpdated. - •Event Handler (Async) pushes to Queue (BullMQ).
- •Worker indexes document to Search Engine with retries.
- •CDC (Golden Standard): Change Data Capture (Debezium). Connects directly to DB transaction log. No app conceptual overhead, but higher ops complexity.
Organization
- •Module: Encapsulate the client in a
SearchModule. - •Abstraction: Create generic
SearchService<T>helpers.- •
indexDocument(id, body) - •
search(query, filters)
- •
- •Mapping: Use
class-transformerto map Entities to "Search Documents". Search docs should be flatter than Relational entities constraints.
Testing
- •E2E: Do not mock the search engine in critical E2E flows.
- •Docker: Spin up
elasticsearch:8container in the test harness to verify indexing works.