Datetime delta trouble

[Timo Virkkala]

Hi,

I'm having some trouble when deleting objects from our production table when using ts-datetime-delta. I sometimes run into this exception:

/etc/local/services/admin-prod/railsapp/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/ts-datetime-delta-1.0.2/lib/thinking_sphinx/deltas/datetime_delta.rb:93:in `toggled': undefined method `>' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)
from /etc/local/services/admin-prod/railsapp/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/thinking-sphinx-2.0.11/lib/thinking_sphinx/active_record/delta.rb:28:in `block in toggled_delta?'
from /etc/local/services/admin-prod/railsapp/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/thinking-sphinx-2.0.11/lib/thinking_sphinx/active_record/delta.rb:28:in `each'
from /etc/local/services/admin-prod/railsapp/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/thinking-sphinx-2.0.11/lib/thinking_sphinx/active_record/delta.rb:28:in `any?'
from /etc/local/services/admin-prod/railsapp/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/thinking-sphinx-2.0.11/lib/thinking_sphinx/active_record/delta.rb:28:in `toggled_delta?'
from /etc/local/services/admin-prod/railsapp/shared/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/thinking-sphinx-2.0.11/lib/thinking_sphinx/active_record.rb:352:in `toggle_deleted'
[...]

It seems to me that this happens when the updated_at column of the model is NULL. Is it so that the timestamp columns should never be null, or is this a bug and ts-datetime-delta  should try to prepare for that as well?

I've also been toying with the idea of making a delta scheme for TS that would work something like the following:

* There would be a table core_indexing_times, which would hold one row for each indexed table/model

* Full indexing runs would update the timestamp in the core_indexing_times table and would index rows created/modified before the timestamp

* Delta indexing runs would index rows modified after the timestamp

Something quite like this was described in the book Introduction to Search with Sphinx (O'Reilly Media). It seems to me that this would have some advantages over ts-datetime-delta, such as the removing the need to run the indexing within some predetermined time period and the need to use index merging. Does anyone know if something like this has already been implemented for Thinking Sphinx, or if there are some reasons why this would be a bad idea?

-- 

Timo Virkkala

[Pat Allan]

Hi Timo

ts-datetime-delta doesn't expect nil values for updated_at - so, a patch for that may be worthwhile. As for your other delta scheme, there's nothing like that that I know of that exists to interact with Thinking Sphinx - so if you like that approach, it'd be great to see a gem like ts-datetime-delta or ts-delayed-delta that took the approach you're suggesting.

If you do create it, please do post here so others are aware :)

Cheers

--
Pat

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