Thanks @Hackwar for re-doing this, it's a nice and important function missing in the indexer!

Thank you @Hackwar is this already ready to test?

Happy to test this also when it's ready!

I would love to claim that this is ready to test, but it turns out I overlooked something and I don't know how to solve it right now. Yes, this code properly indexes the custom fields and this is all working fine, however the content is not updated or modified when the definition of the custom field is changed. So when you unpublish, delete or change the access to a custom field after indexing, that is not updated in the index. There also is no easy solution to make this automatic. My current solution would be to add warning messages if the access, publish or smart search setting for a custom field is changed and then to display those after saving.

So after some considerations there is no feasible solution to update the index automatically when a field is unpublished or the access is changed. The next best thing would be to display a message after saving that the smart search index might need updating, which I've added for the cases when a field has its access or publish state changed or when it has been added or removed as to-be-indexed field. Thus: We are ready to test (and merge) this feature.

Can index be triggered automatically after doing so? How did the search component handle this?

well you can use console command php cli/joomla.php finder:indexer maybe wtih cron
or we should create a scheduled task plugin for this

Doing it automatically would be preferred for sure.

If not automatically, then the notice message after update with a link or button to trigger reindexing would be second best. Update a field, see the notice, click the button to reindex OR ignore because you're still making changes, and then click the button to reindex when you're done

It is not possible to automatically reindex all of this, because we are changing a field and this field might be referenced in thousands of articles (or other content items). Depending on the server and everything, it might take days to re-index all of that and that is simply not something that can be done when clicking on save in the field edit form. We also don't have a link (at the moment) to redirect to the indexing process, because that process normally opens a modal and then fires of a few ajax requests. It might be worth to revisit that in the future and to redesign that process to go to a specific page instead of inside a modal.

The search component always searched directly on the live data, which is why you couldn't get sorting by relevance, filters and depending on your setup could run into performance issues.

Can smart Search get a switch between "live" and "index" ?
On bigger sites it seems to make sense - I see on a website with 90.000 articles the indexing never gets finished and ends up in a server error. (It's a Joomla 3.10.11 site tough)

No, you can't switch between "live" and "index".

Just an idea: write a scheduler task plugin for reindexing and mention it in the blue description box of smart search or enable it by default (including a check if smart search is active)

It does what it should - for me it works and is very helpful

I like @bembelimen's suggestion. In the meantime the limitations should be documented in the help screen docs.

Will test later today. :) Thank you

the limitation referred to here is nothing new - you just noticed it. Changing an access level for example didnt force a re-index.

Please merge as is

Would be good to have some tests here before merging

PS C:\htdocs\j42> php .\cli\joomla.php finder:index -vvv
Finder Indexer
==========================

 Starting Indexer
 Setting up Smart Search plugins
 Setup 4651 items in 0.134 seconds.

In PluginHelper.php line 50:
                                                                                     
  [Error]                                                                            
  Call to undefined method Joomla\CMS\Application\ConsoleApplication::getTemplate()  
                                                                                     

Exception trace:
  at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Plugin\PluginHelper.php:50
 Joomla\CMS\Plugin\PluginHelper::getLayoutPath() at C:\htdocs\j42\administrator\components\com_fields\src\Plugin\FieldsPlugin.php:142
 Joomla\Component\Fields\Administrator\Plugin\FieldsPlugin->onCustomFieldsPrepareField() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Plugin\CMSPlugin.php:279
 Joomla\CMS\Plugin\CMSPlugin->Joomla\CMS\Plugin\{closure}() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\vendor\joomla\event\src\Dispatcher.php:486
 Joomla\Event\Dispatcher->dispatch() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Application\EventAware.php:107
 Joomla\CMS\Application\ConsoleApplication->triggerEvent() at C:\htdocs\j42\plugins\fields\subform\subform.php:209
 PlgFieldsSubform->onCustomFieldsPrepareField() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Plugin\CMSPlugin.php:279
 Joomla\CMS\Plugin\CMSPlugin->Joomla\CMS\Plugin\{closure}() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\vendor\joomla\event\src\Dispatcher.php:486
 Joomla\Event\Dispatcher->dispatch() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Application\EventAware.php:107
 Joomla\CMS\Application\ConsoleApplication->triggerEvent() at C:\htdocs\j42\administrator\components\com_fields\src\Helper\FieldsHelper.php:207
 Joomla\Component\Fields\Administrator\Helper\FieldsHelper::getFields() at C:\htdocs\j42\administrator\components\com_finder\src\Indexer\Helper.php:413
 Joomla\Component\Finder\Administrator\Indexer\Helper::addCustomFields() at C:\htdocs\j42\plugins\finder\content\content.php:330
 PlgFinderContent->index() at C:\htdocs\j42\administrator\components\com_finder\src\Indexer\Adapter.php:244
 Joomla\Component\Finder\Administrator\Indexer\Adapter->onBuildIndex() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Plugin\CMSPlugin.php:279
 Joomla\CMS\Plugin\CMSPlugin->Joomla\CMS\Plugin\{closure}() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\vendor\joomla\event\src\Dispatcher.php:486
 Joomla\Event\Dispatcher->dispatch() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Application\EventAware.php:107
 Joomla\CMS\Application\ConsoleApplication->triggerEvent() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Console\FinderIndexCommand.php:388
 Joomla\CMS\Console\FinderIndexCommand->index() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Console\FinderIndexCommand.php:209
 Joomla\CMS\Console\FinderIndexCommand->doExecute() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\vendor\joomla\console\src\Command\AbstractCommand.php:235
 Joomla\Console\Command\AbstractCommand->execute() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\vendor\joomla\console\src\Application.php:1181
 Joomla\Console\Application->runCommand() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\vendor\joomla\console\src\Application.php:403
 Joomla\Console\Application->doExecute() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Application\ConsoleApplication.php:202
 Joomla\CMS\Application\ConsoleApplication->doExecute() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\vendor\joomla\console\src\Application.php:448
 Joomla\Console\Application->execute() at C:\htdocs\j42\libraries\src\Application\ConsoleApplication.php:255
 Joomla\CMS\Application\ConsoleApplication->execute() at C:\htdocs\j42\cli\joomla.php:76

@brianteeman did you applied changes from #38585 before this patch?

@Fedik yes I did

okay, I see, there another one getLayoutPath for plugins, it cannot work in non Web context:

hmhm

Okay, so to test this PR have to apply changes from #38585 and from #39550
And then do test here.

@Hackwar I was so free to fix the conflict in file administrator/language/en-GB/com_fields.ini. It came from the recently merged PR #39534 .

@Hackwar I was so free to fix again a conflict in file administrator/language/en-GB/com_fields.ini. This time it came from the recently merged PR #39051 . I also adapted the description and testing instructions so it's clear that both PR's #38585 and #39550 are needed, too.

Thanks for this feature. Joomla is cooler and cooler versions after versions bringing useful and powerful features for developers and content oriented websites thanks for all your hard work Super Joomlers!

@Hackwar after apply the patch, only worked after I edit an article. But did not worked when I first click the mass indexer in the smart search component.

Also, I got this. I think this is expected right? And the user need add a override to this string in the administrator?

Thank you for your contribution, unfortunately the 4.4-dev branch doesn't get new features. When #40181 is merged this pr should be rebased to 5.0-dev. Thanks for understanding.

Why closed? Should we reopen the original issue?

thanks, we need documentation for this.