get_index doesn't return the expected information

The get_index method in the Client returns an Index instance, however according to the documentation it should return a dictionary with the index information. In theory you could get this same information out of the Index instance, however it does not include the createdAt and updatedAt values.

client = meilisearch.Client("http://127.0.0.1:7700", "masterKey")
index = client.get_index("movies")

according to the documentation should result in index containing

{
    "uid": "movies",
    "primaryKey": "movie_id",
    "createdAt": "2019-11-20T09:40:33.711324Z",
    "updatedAt": "2019-11-20T10:16:42.761858Z"
}

however instead it contains an instance of Index so createdAt and updatedAt aren’t able to be accessed.

# this will error because there is no created_at
print(index.created_at)

# this will error because there is no updated_at
print(index.updated_at)

One possible solution would be to change the fetch_info method in the Index class to return the dictionary rather than an index object. The only place I see fetch_info getting used is in the Client’s get_index method so I can’t think of anywhere this change would break anything in this package. The only potential breaking issue I can think of is if a user is using this returned index instance as a “feature”, then it would break that code. This option would match the return value in the documentation.

def fetch_info(self):
    index_dict = self.http.get(f'{self.config.paths.index}/{self.uid}')
    self.primary_key = index_dict['primaryKey']
    return self.http.get(f'{self.config.paths.index}/{self.uid}')

Another option would be to include created_at and update_at in the __init__ of the Instance class and update the fetch_info method to set them.

class Index():
    def __init__(self):
        self.config = config
        self.http = HttpRequests(config)
        self.uid = uid
        self.primary_key = primary_key
        self.created_at = None
        self.updated_at = None

    def fetch_info(self):
        index_dict = self.http.get(f'{self.config.paths.index}/{self.uid}')
        self.primary_key = index_dict['primaryKey']
        self.created_at = index_dict.get('createdAt')
        self.updated_at = index_dict.get('updatedAt')
        return self

Then created_at and updated_at would be available in the Index

# now this works
print(index.created_at)

# this will also work
print(index.updated_at)

It’s also might be worth considering a combination of both. That way the return value for get_index would be what is expected, and all the information would be available in the Index index if it is used later.

https://github.com/meilisearch/meilisearch-python/blob/22470c47da255be3cdb6271be82a87eee54b6278/meilisearch/client.py#L67

I also noticed update in the Index class has the same issue.

[curquiza]

As @bidoubiwa said, no need to add list_all_indexes_2 and get_one_index_2 in the docs For the moment, we need to add a wiki to show all the methods we expose that are not in the official docs.

[bidoubiwa]

hey @sanders41 There is no need in creating new code-samples as they are linked to a specific spot in the documentation. Until we specifically need to showcase how to fetch the raw content of an index we don’t need to update this file.