[Search] FacedFilters documentation

[Guikingone]

Hi everyone 👋

While working on a separate Symfony bundle that wrap this SDK, I'm facing a strange behaviour/situation, I'm trying to build a Search class which allows to build complex queries and ease the search process.

The issue is when I'm trying to build facetFilters, I've looked at the internals of search and it seems that the request wait for a specific array:

// Index::parseOptions()

    private function parseOptions(array $options)
    {
        foreach ($options as $key => $value) {
            if ('facetsDistribution' === $key || 'facetFilters' === $key) {
                $options[$key] = json_encode($value);
            } elseif (is_array($value)) {
                $options[$key] = implode(',', $value);
            }
        }

        return $options;
    }

The issue here is that the documentation of this SDK does not explain this type of search and/or the type of body required to be encoded, is there any internal documentation about it? 🤔

Thanks for the feedback and have a great day 🙂

[devrck]

How I see this SDK is a soft wrapper around the REST endpoints so the documentation for the REST endpoints is good enough.

[curquiza]

Hello @Guikingone!

This part might (not 100% sure) be removed: the search method in this SDK will only use the POST /indexes/:uid/search route (and not he GET anymore) for performance reasons.

See:

• Implement POST route in search method #66
• this PR Implement POST route in search method meilisearch-python#131
• the issue following the discussion on the PR: Search with POST: attributesToHighlight, attributesToCrop and attributesToRetrieve don't accept simple strings meilisearch#866 => I wait for the answer before starting any detailed documentation about the search route and its parameters.

I let this issue open for the moment, then! 🙂

[Guikingone]

Hi @curquiza 👋

Thanks for the feedback, good, even if the POST method is used, the facetFilters will stay isn't it?

It could be a body key/value 🤔

[curquiza]

Thanks for the feedback, good, even if the POST method is used, the facetFilters will stay isn't it?

Of course, they are still available 🙂 Both methods have the same behavior and parameter, except once uses GET and the other POST.

It could be a body key/value 🤔

As a basic version, the package is just a simple wrapper around MeiliSearch: I mean, the expected syntax would be the same as the expected syntax in MeiliSearch, but we can think about a more user-friendly way to handle it 🙂

[curquiza]

I close this issue since we have now:

• only the POST method is now used in this SDK: the required type is now an array and not a single string.
• documentation for PHP in the main docs, in advanced guides (see Search Parameters section of example) and in the API references (see the search route)

Feel free to re-open it if something is still not clear 🙂