"Join" multiple Algolia indices?

Question

Is it possible to "join" indices in Algolia to get a merged result?

For example:

If I have two indices : one for 'users', and one for 'events'. Users each have id and name attributes. Events each have date and userId attributes.

How would I go about searching for all users named "bob", and for each user also return the next 5 events associated with them?

Is it possible to "join" them like you would in a relational database? Or do I need to search for users, then iterate through the hits, searching for events for each user? What's the best solution for this type of query here?

Answer 1

Algolia is not designed as a relational database. To get to what you're trying to achieve, you have to transform all your records into "flat" objects (meaning, each object also includes all their linked dependencies).

In your case, what I would do is to add a new key to your user records, named events and have it be an array of events (just like you save them in the events table). This way, you got all the information needed in one call.

Hope that helps,