It seems that changing between Zebra and Elasticsearch produces a bad behavior on the latter, when the search engine is not available. I noticed this while doing some acquisitions where AutoLinkBiblios was set and Koha exploded while trying to link authorities. While writing the steps to reproduce I thought about just adding a record, and boom :-D To reproduce: 1. Start KTD with ES $ ktd --es7 up -d 2. Edit koha-conf.xml so it doesn't find the ES server $ ktd --shell k$ vim /etc/koha/sites/kohadev/koha-conf.xml ... <elasticsearch> <server>potato:9200</server> 3. Catalog a new bibliographic record 4. Click 'Save' => FAIL: Koha explodes: Unable to perform your search. Please try again. at /kohadevbox/koha/Koha/SearchEngine/Elasticsearch/Search.pm line 104 5. Switch SearchEngine=Zebra 6. Stop Zebra: k$ sudo koha-zebra --stop kohadev 7. Repeat 3-4 (you can go back in the browser) => SUCCESS: It saved the record
I will add that the bibliographic search behavior differs between Zebra and ES. * ES: Shows a yellow alert box saying the search couldn't be done * Zebra: Silently shows 'No results for your query' Which is the right one? On attempting to provide a patch, I noticed I was actually changing this behavior to match Zebra's, so asking y'all what we prefer.
I think a "more helpful" message would probably be better. It's a difference if there are no results because of my chosen search terms or because the index/search engine is not there at all.
(In reply to Katrin Fischer from comment #2) > I think a "more helpful" message would probably be better. It's a difference > if there are no results because of my chosen search terms or because the > index/search engine is not there at all. Yeah, I think Koha should say if it can't connect to the search engine.