I’m adding private channels to Player FM and one consideration is search results. Tire’s activerecord does a great job at making updates transparent, but in this case some manual overriding is required.
Importantly, this allows the user to switch privacy on and off, and the index will automatically be created and deleted. I initially considered using a “_changed?” check, but realised it’s unnecessary as ElasticSearch’s remove operation is idempotent. In other words, it’s safe to remove an already-removed item. Yes, the call could be avoided by checking if the resource is already private, but the call is cheap, a fraction of the cost incurred if the channel was public anyway (i.e. it would have to be re-indexed).
There was some talk of a “should_be_indexed?” method which any record could override. I think it would be perfect for this use case - it’d just be a case of a one-word return value (public?) but alas, it wasn’t added. As the code above shows, though, it’s pretty simple to DIY.
