Management Commands

Haystack comes with several management commands to make working with Haystack easier.

clear_index

The clear_index command wipes out your entire search index. Use with caution. In addition to the standard management command options, it accepts the following arguments:

--noinput:

If provided, the interactive prompts are skipped and the index is unceremoniously wiped out.

--verbosity:

Accepted but ignored.

--using:

Update only the named backend (can be used multiple times). By default, all backends will be updated.

--nocommit:

If provided, it will pass commit=False to the backend. This means that the update will not become immediately visible and will depend on another explicit commit or the backend’s commit strategy to complete the update.

By default, this is an INTERACTIVE command and assumes that you do NOT wish to delete the entire index.

Note

The --nocommit argument is only supported by the Solr backend.

Warning

Depending on the backend you’re using, this may simply delete the entire directory, so be sure your HAYSTACK_CONNECTIONS[<alias>]['PATH'] setting is correctly pointed at just the index directory.

update_index

Note

If you use the --start/--end flags on this command, you’ll need to install dateutil to handle the datetime parsing.

The update_index command will freshen all of the content in your index. It iterates through all indexed models and updates the records in the index. In addition to the standard management command options, it accepts the following arguments:

--age:

Number of hours back to consider objects new. Useful for nightly reindexes (--age=24). Requires SearchIndexes to implement the get_updated_field method. Default is None.

--start:

The start date for indexing within. Can be any dateutil-parsable string, recommended to be YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. Requires SearchIndexes to implement the get_updated_field method. Default is None.

--end:

The end date for indexing within. Can be any dateutil-parsable string, recommended to be YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS. Requires SearchIndexes to implement the get_updated_field method. Default is None.

--batch-size:

Number of items to index at once. Default is 1000.

--remove:

Remove objects from the index that are no longer present in the database.

--workers:

Allows for the use multiple workers to parallelize indexing. Requires multiprocessing.

--verbosity:

If provided, dumps out more information about what’s being done.

• 0 = No output

• 1 = Minimal output describing what models were indexed and how many records.

• 2 = Full output, including everything from 1 plus output on each batch that is indexed, which is useful when debugging.

--using:

Update only the named backend (can be used multiple times). By default, all backends will be updated.

--nocommit:

If provided, it will pass commit=False to the backend. This means that the updates will not become immediately visible and will depend on another explicit commit or the backend’s commit strategy to complete the update.

Note

The --nocommit argument is only supported by the Solr and ElasticSearch backends.

Examples:

# Update everything.
./manage.py update_index --settings=settings.prod

# Update everything with lots of information about what's going on.
./manage.py update_index --settings=settings.prod --verbosity=2

# Update everything, cleaning up after deleted models.
./manage.py update_index --remove --settings=settings.prod

# Update everything changed in the last 2 hours.
./manage.py update_index --age=2 --settings=settings.prod

# Update everything between Dec. 1, 2011 & Dec 31, 2011
./manage.py update_index --start='2011-12-01T00:00:00' --end='2011-12-31T23:59:59' --settings=settings.prod

# Update just a couple apps.
./manage.py update_index blog auth comments --settings=settings.prod

# Update just a single model (in a complex app).
./manage.py update_index auth.User --settings=settings.prod

# Crazy Go-Nuts University
./manage.py update_index events.Event media news.Story --start='2011-01-01T00:00:00 --remove --using=hotbackup --workers=12 --verbosity=2 --settings=settings.prod

Note

This command ONLY updates records in the index. It does NOT handle deletions unless the --remove flag is provided. You might consider a queue consumer if the memory requirements for --remove don’t fit your needs. Alternatively, you can use the RealtimeSignalProcessor, which will automatically handle deletions.

rebuild_index

A shortcut for clear_index followed by update_index. It accepts any/all of the arguments of the following arguments:

--age:

Number of hours back to consider objects new. Useful for nightly reindexes (--age=24). Requires SearchIndexes to implement the get_updated_field method.

--batch-size:

Number of items to index at once. Default is 1000.

--site:

The site object to use when reindexing (like search_sites.mysite).

--noinput:

If provided, the interactive prompts are skipped and the index is unceremoniously wiped out.

--remove:

Remove objects from the index that are no longer present in the database.

--verbosity:

If provided, dumps out more information about what’s being done.

• 0 = No output

• 1 = Minimal output describing what models were indexed and how many records.

• 2 = Full output, including everything from 1 plus output on each batch that is indexed, which is useful when debugging.

--using:

Update only the named backend (can be used multiple times). By default, all backends will be updated.

--nocommit:

If provided, it will pass commit=False to the backend. This means that the update will not become immediately visible and will depend on another explicit commit or the backend’s commit strategy to complete the update.

For when you really, really want a completely rebuilt index.

build_solr_schema

Once all of your SearchIndex classes are in place, this command can be used to generate the XML schema Solr needs to handle the search data. Generates a Solr schema and solrconfig file that reflects the indexes using templates under a Django template dir ‘search_configuration/*.xml’. If none are found, then provides defaults suitable for Solr 6.4.

It accepts the following arguments:

--filename:

If provided, renders schema.xml from the template directory directly to a file instead of stdout. Does not render solrconfig.xml

--using:

Update only the named backend (can be used multiple times). By default all backends will be updated.

--configure-directory:

If provided, attempts to configure a core located in the given directory by removing the managed-schema.xml (renaming if it exists), configuring the core by rendering the schema.xml and solrconfig.xml templates provided in the Django project’s TEMPLATE_DIR/search_configuration directories.

--reload-core:

If provided, attempts to automatically reload the solr core via the urls in the URL and ADMIN_URL settings of the Solr entry in HAYSTACK_CONNECTIONS. Both must be provided.

Note

build_solr_schema --configure-directory=<dir> can be used in isolation to drop configured files anywhere one might want for staging to one or more solr instances through arbitrary means. It will render all template files in the directory into the configure-directory

build_solr_schema --configure-directory=<dir> --reload-core can be used together to reconfigure and reload a core located on a filesystem accessible to Django in a one-shot mechanism with no further requirements (assuming there are no errors in the template or configuration)

Note

build_solr_schema uses templates to generate the output files. Haystack provides default templates for schema.xml and solrconfig.xml that are solr 6.5 compatible using some sensible defaults. If you would like to provide your own template, you will need to place it in search_configuration/ inside a directory specified by your app’s template directories settings. Examples:

/myproj/myapp/templates/search_configuration/schema.xml
/myproj/myapp/templates/search_configuration/sorlconfig.xml
/myproj/myapp/templates/search_configuration/otherfile.xml
# ...or...
/myproj/templates/search_configuration/schema.xml
/myproj/templates/search_configuration/sorlconfig.xml
/myproj/myapp/templates/search_configuration/otherfile.xml

Warning

This command does NOT automatically update the schema.xml file for you all by itself. You must use –filename or –configure-directory to achieve this.

haystack_info

Provides some basic information about how Haystack is setup and what models it is handling. It accepts no arguments. Useful when debugging or when using Haystack-enabled third-party apps.