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v13 Best way to transform External Index propertie...
# help-with-umbraco
h
Hi all 👋 I'm currently migrating a solution up to v13 from v8. It previously had a custom index for dealing with some products which had some custom values in that index. We're trying to remove this custom index and just rely on the ExternalIndex as is recommended however we would still like to include/transform the custom values. What/how/where is the best place to do this? Can I just create an IndexPopulator and amend the external index that way and if so is this just a composer I'd need to register in order for it to work or should it be attached to a Notification handler for example. How does a custom index populator behave in relation to the default OOTB one (will it run after)? Any help or advice would be great
d
An IndexPopulator would just overwrite existing index values, so I don't think that would be a good idea if you just want to add some values to existing content. It works perfectly if you want to add new non-umbraco content to the index though. I'm gonna follow this topic to see what others say about this, because all angles that I've tried to enrich existing content with additional values have all felt extremely hacky
j
The recommended approach is to hook into the 
transformingIndexValues
event. This runs for every document that is indexed, so when a specific content node is indexed it runs this event and you can add additional fields and populate them with data. The main points to remember is to make it as fast as possible to run and also to make it specific enough to not waste time on indexed documents that do not need the extra data. I've written a blog where I show how to use this event to enrich the index with data from a separate content node which I get through Umbracos cache, but that could just as well be from an external data source: https://dev.to/jemayn/index-pdfs-on-their-pages-in-umbraco-30l1 You should also beware that when you index data this way it is of course a snapshot, and refreshing the values happen when a page is published or when the index is fully rebuilt, so if your external data is something that fx is imported in a background job, then its a good idea to trigger an index rebuild after that job to ensure the newly imported values are updated in the index.
Here is a quick example of how you can reindex specific pages during an import if that is needed:
Copy code
csharp
_examineManager.TryGetIndex(Umbraco.Cms.Core.Constants.UmbracoIndexes.ExternalIndexName, out IIndex index);
var results = index.Searcher.CreateQuery().NativeQuery(
    $"__NodeTypeAlias: product " +
    $"+((gln_da:{product.Gln} targetMarket_da:{product.TargetMarket} gtin_da:{product.Gtin}))").Execute();

if (!results.Any()) return;
var contentToReindex = new List<IContent>();

foreach (var searchResult in results)
{
    // Reindex content
    if (!int.TryParse(searchResult.Id, out int contentId))
        continue;

    var content = _contentService.GetById(contentId);
    if (content is null) continue;
    contentToReindex.Add(content);
}

index.IndexItems(_publishedContentValueSetBuilder.GetValueSets(contentToReindex.ToArray()));
h
Thank you so much Jesper. That’s exactly the kind of thing I was looking for 🙏
In your example blog post (which is great btw) I see you hook in to the UmbracoStartedNotification. If a new product is publish for example. It presumably won’t hit this transform in that case (if I’m understanding correctly) or will it only do this when the site starts or the index is rebuilt
To be more specific with what I’m doing here. We have a property on the product docType that is effectively a multi node picker. That just saves the UDI’s in the index. But ideally I need the actually names in the index instead (commas separated for example). So something similar to what you mentioned where we can look those up in the cache for example would be suitable To clarify, there’s probably wider work to be done to refactor how the data is stored on the node in the first place to make this easier OOTB but for now, I’m just trying to migrate the existing functionality. This has been super helpful thank you
j
The UmbracoStartedNotification is when we register the TransformingIndexValues event, so the actual event code will run every time you index a document, it's just the event registration that occurs in the startup event 🙂
Ahh I see, then this blogpost is even more relevant tbh - as there are some considerations when indexing content from another node: https://dev.to/jemayn/the-problem-of-referenced-content-in-examine-indexing-umbraco-11-4355
h
Ahhh gotcha 👍
Perfect. Thank you so much dude
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