Improve Performance for InstantSearch iOS

Mitigate the impact of a slow network on your application

You can mitigate the impact of slow network on your search experience by managing the user’s expectations. One way of letting the user know that the network is suboptimal is by displaying a progress indicator, which will avoid them being frustrated by your application and lets them know the network delays are to blame.

We provide such a mechanism with InstantSearch: see the section on Loading indicator.

Optimize build size

In some cases, you might not need to use our widget system, and just want to use the core parts of InstantSearch. In that case, you can decide to download only specific parts of the library.

CocoaPods

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pod 'InstantSearch', '~> 5.0'
# pod 'InstantSearch/UI' for access to everything
# pod 'InstantSearch/Core' for access to everything except the UI controllers
# pod 'InstantSearch/Client' for access only to the API Client

Carthage

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github "algolia/instantsearch-ios" ~> 5.0 # for access to everything
# github "algolia/instantsearch-core-swift" ~> 6.0 # for access to everything except the UI widgets
# github "algolia/algoliasearch-client-swift" ~> 7.0 # for access only to the API Client

Queries per second (QPS)

Search operations aren’t limited by a fixed “search quota”. Instead, they’re limited by the maximum QPS and the operations limit of your plan.

Every keystroke in InstantSearch using the SearchBox counts as one operation. Then, depending on the widgets you add to your search interface, you may have more operations being counted on each keystroke. For example, if you have a search with a SearchBox, a HierarchicalMenu, and a RefinementList, then each keystroke triggers one operation. But as soon as a user refines the HierarchicalMenu or RefinementList, it triggers a second operation on each keystroke.

A good rule to keep in mind is that most search interfaces using InstantSearch trigger one operation per keystroke. Then, every refined widget (clicked widget) adds one more operation to the total count.

In case you have issue with the QPS you can consider implement a debounced SearchBox.