Adds weight parameter type definition for RRF retrievers.

[mridula-s109]

Changes

• RRFRetriever.retrievers: RetrieverContainer[] → RRFRetrieverContainer[]
• New RRFRetrieverContainer extends RetrieverContainer with optional weight?: float
• Defaults to 1.0, must be non-negative

Related: elastic/elasticsearch#130658, elastic/elasticsearch#136477

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR adds support for weighted retrievers in the RRF (Reciprocal Rank Fusion) retriever by introducing a new weight parameter. The change allows individual retrievers to have different influence levels when combining their results.

• Introduced RRFRetrieverContainer class extending RetrieverContainer with optional weight parameter
• Updated RRFRetriever.retrievers type from RetrieverContainer[] to RRFRetrieverContainer[]
• Added comprehensive documentation for the weight parameter behavior and constraints

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[github-actions]

Following you can find the validation changes against the target branch for the API.

API	Status	Request	Response
search	🔴	2588/2615 → 2590/2615	2615/2615

You can validate this API yourself by using the make validate target.

[leemthompo]

You'll need to backport this to 9.2 right?

[mridula-s109]

You'll need to backport this to 9.2 right?

Thanks for the reminder! I've added the backport-9.2 label but the automation isn't triggering. Does the backport job only run after the PR is merged, or is there a specific way to trigger it manually?

[leemthompo]

The backport job only runs after the PR is merged (if there are conflicts might need to use the manual backport tool to clean those up)

[flobernd]

Thanks for the PR @mridula-s109 !

From looking at the JSON example provided in elastic/elasticsearch#130658, @pmpailis seems to be right that the structure is not correct this way.

"retrievers": [ // <- RRFRetriever.retrievers
  {
    "retriever": { // <- RRFRetrieverComponent.retriever
      "standard": { // <- RetrieverContainer variant
        "query": { "match": { "description": "pizza" } } 
      }
    },
    "weight": 0.7 // <- RRFRetrieverComponent.weigth
  },

I think it should rather look like this:

export class RRFRetrieverComponent { // name taken from the server code
  retriever: RetrieverContainer
  weigth?: float
}

and

// In RRFRetriever:
retrievers: RRFRetrieverComponent[]

Btw.: I'm a little bit surprised that we ship this breaking change in a minor release. Is this expected?

Side note: For container variants, it's important to mark all fields that are not actual variants with the @container_property tag (see here).

[pmpailis]

Btw.: I'm a little bit surprised that we ship this breaking change in a minor release. Is this expected?

I think that this is an extension, i.e. an alternative format that we support, and not a breaking change. The previous format has not gone away (which also implies some adjustments in this PR)

[flobernd]

@pmpailis

I think that this is an extension, i.e. an alternative format that we support, and not a breaking change. The previous format has not gone away

Ah right, I just saw the corresponding test cases 👍

which also implies some adjustments in this PR

Unfortunately. This kind of extension will result in an untagged/undiscriminated union in the specification - which is the worst possible construct to have for all statically typed clients 😐

[Anaethelion]

I have removed the 9.2 backport label.
This sadly comes too late for us to include in the release of clients, especially with an untagged union which causes a breaking change in the API.
Please for now merge to main, thank you!

[flobernd]

@mridula-s109 Are you going to update the PR? Happy to assist, if you need help.

I would suggest something like this:

export class RRFRetrieverComponent { // name taken from the server code
  retriever: RetrieverContainer
  weigth?: float
}

export type RRFRetrieverDescriptor = RetrieverContainer | RRFRetrieverComponent;
// ^ naming is hard. Open for suggestions.

// In RRFRetriever:
retrievers: RRFRetrieverDescriptor[]

[mridula-s109]

@mridula-s109 Are you going to update the PR? Happy to assist, if you need help.

I would suggest something like this:

export class RRFRetrieverComponent { // name taken from the server code
  retriever: RetrieverContainer
  weigth?: float
}

export type RRFRetrieverDescriptor = RetrieverContainer | RRFRetrieverComponent;
// ^ naming is hard. Open for suggestions.

// In RRFRetriever:
retrievers: RRFRetrieverDescriptor[]

Thanks for the suggestion @flobernd, Yes i will update the PR accordingly today and rerequest review on the same.

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

Copilot reviewed 1 out of 1 changed files in this pull request and generated no new comments.

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[flobernd]

👍 that name fits better

[flobernd]

/nit: we should also add the @server_default tag as a machine readable alternative to mentioning the default value in the doc string.