Facets

[hellovic]

Hi,

How can I do facets grouping of data, e.g. date_histogram, by using elasticsearch-php client?

I tried to send the JSON

{
"query" : {
...
},
"facets": {
    "histo1": {
      "date_histogram": {
        "key_field": "post_date",
        "interval": "month"
      }
    }
  }
}

The ['hits'] gives what match but there is no ['facets'] or something similar for the facets data.

I tried to read the doc on https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-php/tree/master/docs, but it doesn't mention facets at all. Please correct if i am wrong and thanks for this elasticsearch php client.

Vic

[hellovic]

Sorry I think I know where the problem is.

Instead of using json_decode() for transferring JSON to php array, I just use the JSON string as the ['body']

$sESSearch = '{ query...facets...}';
$aESSearchParam['index'] = $sESIndex;
$aESSearchParam['type'] = $sESType;
$aESSearchParam['body'] =$sESSearch;
$aReturnArray = $oESClient->search($aESSearchParam);

It throws no error and gives ['hits'] records so I thought it was ok to accept the JSON string directly.

After doubled checked ['hits'], and it is not correct, it actually gives all records, that means the search ['body'] is empty.

So the conclusion is json_decode($sJSONString, TRUE) is required if we use JSON string and then everything (including facets) will be working fine. Sorry for not carefully RTFM!

[polyfractal]

Yep, you are correct. The client only accepts associative arrays in 99.99% of the APIs, so you have to convert it with json_decode() first. The only place that accepts a string for the body is the Bulk API.

That said, I agree that the client should throw an error in this particular case...it should have raised an exception saying that strings are not valid. I'll patch that up today. Thanks!

(And no worries about not reading the documentation...they are very sparse so far! A lot of work left to do)

[hellovic]

Cool, throwing an error should be helpful. Thanks and thanks for this nice PHP client.

[polyfractal]

Heya @hellovic, I looked into this deeper and your first intuition (body could accept a JSON string) was correct: there is a bug in the Search endpoint. It was trying to stuff string bodies into the 'q' URI parameter, which is incorrect.

Thanks for the bug report, and sorry for the incorrect explanation...I really need to have a cup of coffee before responding to issues :)