👋 Hello team, We’re currently facing an issue with our application related to combination mapping of records for 33 facet values. When generating all combinations, the total number of records has reached around 8 million (80 lakhs), which is starting to cause performance concerns. To handle this, instead of flattening the data, we tried storing it as stringified arrays (

[]

). The data loads correctly, but before moving forward, I wanted to check: • Does Typesense support filtering on stringified arrays (

[]

) in cascading filters? • Will it behave the same as flat JSON structures when used with the InstantSearch frontend service? Also, since the performance is slowing down with each selection in the frontend, are there any suggestions or best practices to handle such a large dataset more efficiently? Any recommendations to improve speed and responsiveness would be greatly appreciated.

Could you describe the use-case a bit, to get more context on what you're building?

We’re building a search-based application where users can select values from different facets, and based on their selection, the available options in other facets are updated in a cascading manner. To maintain this hierarchy and interdependency between facets, we initially created flattened combinations of records, which led to around 8 million (80 lakh) records. However, due to the performance impact of handling such a large number of flattened records, we recently explored an alternative approach—storing the facet values as stringified arrays (

[]

) instead of flattening them. The data loads fine, but we’re evaluating whether Typesense can support filtering on this structure and still behave correctly with InstantSearch on the frontend. The goal is to improve performance while still supporting cascading filtering between facets. Hope this gives a clearer picture—happy to provide more details if needed!

By default, when selecting a facet and filtering, only the valid remaining facets will be available. An example is our e-commerce storefront demo available here: https://typesense.org/docs/guide/reference-implementations/ecommerce-storefront.html