Posts created before index is active don’t get deleted

[richaber]

@ericmulder has described an issue with meta used for indexing in the WPORG support forum:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/posts-created-before-index-is-active-dont-get-deleted/

When you activate an index, the posts created before that get synced, but don’t receive a post_meta field called algolia_posts_{index}_records_count. It turns out that that meta is used to delete the post from the index. This causes orphaned posts in the algolia index which leads to confusing 404 search results. I created a video with a basic wordpress site demonstrating the issue.

There is a link to the screen recording in the support forum post for further study.

[asharirfan]

EOD Update:
I have been able to reproduce the issue on my local. Right now, I am getting myself familiar with the codebase and working on a possible solution for this problem.

[ericmulder]

The record count is set in two places (depending on the index type): https://github.com/WebDevStudios/wp-search-with-algolia/search?q=set_post_records_count

These functions are called from update_records which is called from the sync functions (which are called from the sync_item function here).

The re_index function only exists in the parent class, and doesn't call the update_records function

[ericmulder]

Thanks!