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Faceting Nested Information with Single Field and Separator

TLDR Jainil asked about faceting by an object, but Jason suggested storing data in a single field using a separator. Jainil considered using JSON but Jason reaffirmed any unique string can be used.

4mo

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May 17, 2023 (4 months ago)

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Jainil

02:20 PM

I have nested information about a field that I’m using to facet my records - I.e
• type of source
• name of source
Is it possible to facet by an object? If not, what’s the recommended way of faceting such that I’m able to get both properties in the faceting menu (I.e both name and type)

02:21

Jainil

02:21 PM

My thoughts is either just encode both fields into a single field (stringified json) and then decode and use decoded

02:22

Jainil

02:22 PM

But if I don’t have to go through the encode/decode process as to not have duplicate data that’d be awesome.

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Jason

07:57 PM

It is not possible to facet by a whole object, only on values within an object individually

07:58

Jason

07:58 PM

I would recommend storing this data in a single field using a special separator that you can parse out at display time.

So for eg, create a new field called type_name_facet and store the value as typeA|||nameA

07:59

Jason

07:59 PM

then facet on this field, and when you want to display the facets to users, split the value on ||| and then use the appropriate component for display purposes

May 18, 2023 (4 months ago)

Jainil

06:40 PM

Would there be any reason not to just encode it as a json?

06:41

Jainil

06:41 PM

So the type_name_facet becomes '{"type": "typeA", "name": "nameA"}'

06:43

Jainil

06:43 PM

My goal is to allow for full flexibility of all fields (some information might take in user input, and so we're not guaranteed the user ever doesn't use the specified delimiter)

06:43

Jainil

06:43 PM

i.e. name = "This ||| is my name"

06:43

Jainil

06:43 PM

Perhaps an over optimization

Jason

06:59 PM

Yeah, you could store a JSON string too (not a parsed object)… just any string that would be unique

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