Bagisto, an open-source eCommerce platform powered by Laravel, is designed to be adaptable and robust, supporting businesses as they scale. As product catalogs grow into the millions, performance becomes critical. This blog delves into advanced strategies for scaling Bagisto to efficiently manage 10 million products, focusing on key areas like database optimizations, caching solutions, and efficient queue management.
Understanding the Challenges
When scaling an eCommerce store to handle millions of products, the challenges evolve as the product catalog grows. With around 0.2 million products, the system performs smoothly, handling database queries and searches efficiently without the need for advanced optimizations. At 10 million products, the system experiences significant strain on the database and search, requiring advanced strategies like Elasticsearch, and optimized caching to maintain performance.
Key Challenges:
- Database Performance – Handling a massive volume of records efficiently without slowing down the system.
- Search Optimization – Ensuring that users can quickly find products, even with such a large catalog.
- Indexing & Caching – Reducing load times and improving response speed with proper indexing strategies and caching mechanisms.
Let’s explore how Bagisto, built on Laravel, handles these challenges and scales efficiently.
Database Performance in Bagisto
Bagisto uses MySQL/MariaDB by default, and to handle 10 million products efficiently, we need to optimize both the database and the way the platform interacts with it.
Optimizing Database Queries in Bagisto
Bagisto uses Eloquent ORM for database queries, which makes it easier to interact with the database but can sometimes lead to performance bottlenecks with large datasets. To mitigate this:
- Eager Loading: Avoid N+1 query problems by using eager loading for relationships. This ensures that related models are loaded in a single query, eliminating the need for multiple queries.
- Batch Updates: When updating large sets of records (e.g., updating product prices or inventory), use batch processing to handle them in chunks, reducing the load on the database.
Indexing Strategies in Bagisto for Scalable Database Performance
Bagisto structures indexed data for efficient search and retrieval, storing product information in Elasticsearch as documents within indices. Each document in an index represents a product or product-related data (like product name, price, description, etc.). When a user performs a search on Bagisto, Elasticsearch looks at the indexed data and retrieves the most relevant results based on the query.
To enhance Bagisto’s performance, the following indexers play a crucial role:
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Price Indexing: Price indexing plays a crucial role in eCommerce operations, ensuring accurate product prices across the storefront. This documentation will delve into how Bagisto handles price indexing. The price indexing process in Bagisto involves updating product prices in the database whenever changes occur. This process ensures that the latest price information is reflected accurately across the storefront.
- Inventory Indexing: Similar to price indexing, the inventory indexing process in Bagisto involves updating product quantities in the database. Whenever customers purchase, return, or restock products, Bagisto automatically updates inventory levels. This real-time synchronization ensures that inventory information remains accurate and up to date. Ensures consistent and accurate application of all pricing rules, including catalog rules, throughout the store.
- Flat Indexing: Flat indexing is a mechanism that optimizes product data retrieval. By processing products in batches, the system can handle large datasets efficiently without overloading the server. It’s particularly useful for managing large volumes of product attributes (e.g., SKU, price, weight) for various channels and locales.
- Catalog Rule Indexing: Catalog rule indexing updates product prices based on changes in catalog rules, such as expiring or modified offers. Bagisto schedules this indexing process daily at 00:01, ensuring that pricing remains accurate without requiring manual intervention.
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ElasticSearch: Elasticsearch handles large data volumes and delivers fast, scalable search results. Bagisto uses Elasticsearch to index all products, enhancing search performance significantly.
Leveraging Elasticsearch for Scalable Search
One of the most critical components of scaling an eCommerce platform is ensuring that product search functionality remains fast and efficient, even with millions of products. While MySQL/MariaDB can handle basic queries, they are not optimized for full-text search or complex filtering across large catalogs, which is where Elasticsearch excels. This is where Elasticsearch comes in.
1. Why Elasticsearch?
Elasticsearch is a distributed search engine optimized for speed and scalability, offering powerful full-text search capabilities. By integrating Elasticsearch with Bagisto, we can achieve the following benefits:
- Full-Text Search: Elasticsearch provides powerful full-text search capabilities, making it faster and more efficient than relational databases.
- Scalability: With its distributed architecture, Elasticsearch can scale horizontally by adding more nodes.
- Real-Time Indexing: When products are added, updated, or removed, Elasticsearch allows for real-time indexing. This ensures that product searches reflect the most up-to-date information, crucial for a dynamic e-commerce environment.
Integrating Elasticsearch with Bagisto enables search performance to scale seamlessly as product volume grows.
2. Integrating Elasticsearch with Bagisto
Integrating Elasticsearch with Bagisto is straightforward. First, configure your Elasticsearch instance and connect it through the admin panel. Bagisto will automatically index products, including attributes like name, description, price, and availability.
Here’s a simple configuration for integrating Elasticsearch with Bagisto:
To configure Elasticsearch, please refer to the Configuration Setup documentation.
3. Real-Time Indexing and Synchronization
Elasticsearch indexes products in real-time, ensuring that Bagisto instantly reflects additions or updates. This keeps product searches up-to-date, which is crucial in eCommerce environments where product information changes frequently.
- How Real-Time Indexing Works in Bagistos: When Bagisto updates a product—whether it’s a price change, inventory update, or a new addition—Elasticsearch instantly indexes these changes, keeping search results up to date. This means that if a product’s availability or price changes, the updated information will be available in search results within seconds. This functionality ensures that customers see the latest information without any delay, improving their overall shopping experience.
- Automatic Re-Indexing in Bagisto: Bagisto supports automatic re-indexing, which ensures that the data in Elasticsearch stays consistent with the Bagisto database. Whenever there’s a change in the product catalog—such as adding a new product, updating product details, or deleting a product—Bagisto automatically triggers a re-indexing process to keep the search results up to date. This keeps the Elasticsearch index synchronized with the most current product data from the platform.
Automatic re-indexing is important because it ensures that product searches reflect accurate, up-to-date information. Without automatic re-indexing, users might see outdated product information, such as old prices or incorrect inventory levels.
Conclusion: Future Scalability Beyond 10 Million Products
Scaling Bagisto to handle 10 million products is a challenging but achievable task. By optimizing the database with eager loading and batch updates, integrating Elasticsearch for fast, real-time search, and leveraging advanced caching techniques, you can ensure that your Bagisto-powered store remains performant, even as your product catalog grows.
Thank you for taking the time to read this guide. We hope it provided valuable insights for scaling your Bagisto store. If you have any questions or run into challenges, don’t hesitate to leave a comment we’re here to help!
If you’re looking for tailored solutions, consider hiring a Laravel developer to create custom features for your store. To discover more extensions and tools for Bagisto, explore the full range at bagisto.com.
