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Elasticsearch Reliability & Downtime Reduction Plan

Status: Priority / Backend + FE staging QA
Date: 2026-07-23 (updated 2026-07-28)

API contract (authoritative)​

ItemValue
Primary signalHTTP 503
HeaderX-Search-Available: 0 (bonus; CORS-exposed)
Body messageSearch is temporarily unavailable. Please try again shortly.
Never200 + empty list for ES downtime

Applies to: /product/search, /autocomplete, /product/autocomplete, product dynamic filters, other ES-backed listing endpoints.

FE CORS note​

X-Search-Available is in Access-Control-Expose-Headers (same as X-Pagination-*).

Force degraded mode (staging QA)​

  1. On staging API host set in params-local.php: 
    'allowForceSearchUnavailable' => true,
  2. Call any search/autocomplete/filter URL with:
    • query: ?forceSearchUnavailable=1
    • or header: X-Force-Search-Unavailable: 1
  3. Expect 503 + X-Search-Available: 0
  4. Retry without the flag → normal 200 when ES is healthy

Keep allowForceSearchUnavailable false in production.

Backend changes shipped​

  • ES timeouts + spool lock recovery + health-check cron command
  • API ErrorHandler → 503 + header
  • CORS expose X-Search-Available
  • Autocomplete returns same 503 (not empty 200) on ES downtime
  • Staging force-degrade flag for QA