Test the Elasticsearch 8 index

Perform tests on the newly prepared Elasticsearch 8 index to determine if you are ready to upgrade the production environment.

After the preparation step has completed, your production environment will function in a “double-indexing” mode that simultaneously sends all write queries (e.g. indexing, updating or deleting documents) to both the Elasticsearch 7 and the Elasticsearch 8 clusters.

Browser testing

Use the query argument ?vip-search-test-es-next= to test the new Elasticsearch 8 index by passing one of the following values:

• true: Useful for testing a single page. Sends the current request to the Elasticsearch 8 index.
• session: Useful for comprehensive testing. Send all requests to the Elasticsearch 8 index until the browser window is closed or until the false value is passed instead.
• false: Discontinue the behavior of session and default to the Elasticsearch 7 index.

For example, to send a single query for “potato” to the new Elasticsearch 8 index for a site with the domain example.com, append the arguments s=potato and vip-search-test-es-next=true:
https://example.com/?s=potato&vip-search-test-es-next=true

Enterprise Search Dev Tools

To verify that the query was sent to the Elasticsearch 8 index, refer to the Enterprise Search Dev Tools in the WordPress Admin toolbar.

• (ES8) will be displayed if the query was handled by Elasticsearch 8.

• (ES7) will be displayed if the query was handled by Elasticsearch 7.

To access Enterprise Search Dev Tools, a user to be logged in to the site and have a WordPress Administrator (or Super Admin) role.

Read more about Enterprise Search Dev Tools