Updating synonyms and collections

[paffel2]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

At the moment, synonyms are added only through the code. If you implement the external functionality of adding synonyms, then when you call update collections, all synonyms will be erased, since they are not specified in the collections class.

Describe the solution you'd like

It is better to add an additional parameter to the update collections --with-synonym command to control the deletion of synonyms.

[EricOuma]

@paffel2 Any reason you are not specifying the pre-existing synonyms in the collections class?

[paffel2]

@paffel2 Any reason you are not specifying the pre-existing synonyms in the collections class?

I'm currently working on an e-com project. The catalog is updated every day, and we constantly need to add synonyms. Doing this through code is inconvenient. Therefore, my customer adds them through the admin panel of the site on their own.

[EricOuma]

I see. That makes sense. I'll work on something.

[EricOuma]

@paffel2 Hello. This is the TypesenseCollection method that handles synonyms. You can modify its behavior for that specific collection class, e.g., skip deletion of existing synonyms. That should solve the problem you are facing

 def create_or_update_synonyms(self):
        current_synonyms = {}
        for synonym in self.get_synonyms().get("synonyms", []):
            name = synonym.pop("id")
            current_synonyms[name] = synonym

        defined_synonyms = {}
        for synonym_data in self._synonyms:
            defined_synonyms.update(synonym_data)

        missing_synonyms_names = set(current_synonyms.keys()).difference(
            defined_synonyms.keys()
        )
        # these are synonyms present in the schema but not defined in code, either because they were manually 
        # added or the code that defined them has been removed
        has_changes = False

        for synonym_name in missing_synonyms_names: 
            has_changes = True
            self.delete_synonym(synonym_name)  # <- You can modify this behaviour
        ...