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Understanding Facet Query and Filter By on Typesense

TLDR Ricardo needed clarification on using facet_query. Kishore Nallan explained its use alongside filter_by, helping Ricardo understand the concepts. The discussion also touched upon how facet_query works with sets of fields and the difference between facet_query and filter_by.

33mo

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May 08, 2021 (33 months ago)

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Ricardo

09:19 AM

or am I even using facet_query properly?

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Kishore Nallan

09:20 AM

Can you try setting per_page and page explicitly?

Ricardo

09:21 AM

ya that works

09:21

Ricardo

09:21 AM

thanks

Kishore Nallan

09:21 AM

Generally for facet query you don't care about results because it is a query on the facets of the query.

09:22

Kishore Nallan

09:22 AM

So keeping that in view, Typesense does not return results.

Ricardo

09:22 AM

I see

09:22

Ricardo

09:22 AM

so I am trying to get all the records that are in the category chair

09:22

Ricardo

09:22 AM

is this the best way to go about it?

Kishore Nallan

09:23 AM

For that you have to use filter_by https://typesense.org/docs/0.20.0/guide/building-a-search-application.html#filtering-results

09:23

Kishore Nallan

09:23 AM

?filter_by=category: foo

Ricardo

09:23 AM

so can you explain the difference between filter_by and facet_query

09:24

Ricardo

09:24 AM

I don't think I'm understanding what facet_query does

Kishore Nallan

09:24 AM

filter_by filters the actual results. It is equivalent to the WHERE clause in SQL.

09:25

Kishore Nallan

09:25 AM

Let's say you have an ecommerce shop and you have products from different brands. Lets say you search for shoes, and then facet on brands. This will return all shoe brands available with their corresponding counts. Now if you want to search within those facet brands, you will use facet query.

09:26

Kishore Nallan

09:26 AM

In the song search demo, facet query is used here to filter the genres here if the user types into the textbox.

Ricardo

12:14 PM

ok I think I understand

12:14

Ricardo

12:14 PM

so facet_query is like a search in the facet itself

12:15

Ricardo

12:15 PM

but then if I do a filter by with a query: '*'
wouldn't that be equivalent to a facet_query?

Kishore Nallan

12:17 PM

> so facet_query is like a search in the facet itself
Correct.

As for your second question, you can search on one set of fields and facet on another set of fields. They don't have to overlap.

Ricardo

12:18 PM

I see. ok cool. Thanks Kishore Nallan I'll play around with this a bit. appreciate your patience and time 🙂

Kishore Nallan

12:18 PM

Welcome.

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