Comment 1 for bug 1256118

What is needed is a function like
 is_elasticsearch_server_available()

Which checks to see if a connection can be made to the ElasticSearch Server - returning true/false

That way we could use it in places like admin/extensions/pluginconfig.php?plugintype=search&pluginname=elasticsearch to complement the "The Elasticsearch plugin is currently active." message with something like "The Elasticsearch Server is/is not currently reachable".

And we could use it on search/elasticsearch/index.php to suppress the "An exception was thrown of class Elastica\Exception\ClientException. No enabled connection" warnings if the ElasticSearch Server is not able to be accessed.

We could instead have a "We were unable to process your search - please try again. If the problem persists please contact your administrator" message for the page.