Magento - Programmatically Disable Automatic Indexing

Question

In Magento 1.9 Enterprise (which is essentially the 1.4 Community Edition), what is the correct way to disable the index programmatically so that it wont reindex after every product update?

We have a complex product import procedure, so we can't use the built-in catalog import.

Answer 1

Setting the indexer to "manual" mode will prevent it from automatically indexing on save/edit/delete.

In MAGE_ROOT/shell you can find a script called indexer.php that, between others allows you to enable/disable indexers:

php indexer.php --mode-manual catalog_url
php indexer.php --mode-realtime catalog_url

You can have a script that sets all the indexers to manual

If you want to do it programatically, something along the lines should work:

$pCollection = Mage::getSingleton('index/indexer')->getProcessesCollection(); 
foreach ($pCollection as $process) {
  $process->setMode(Mage_Index_Model_Process::MODE_MANUAL)->save();
  //$process->setMode(Mage_Index_Model_Process::MODE_REAL_TIME)->save();
}

Answer 2

You may not have to do it programmatically. I had a similar issue where I had about 10 files to import. I couldn't combine as it was a site move and some were dependents on others.

You can turn off automatic index, which if your import script is configured properly will listen to.

It's worth a shot:

System -> Index Management
Check All Items
Change Action to "Change Index Mode"
Select "Manual"
Save

Hope this helps.