“Car sale application”– Result Grouping, let’s group some search results (part 6)

Rafał Kuć Solr 0 Comment

In today’s post we will try to add to our car sale application the new functionality, which allows us to group some search results. Let’s imagine a user who would like to search for “audi a4” advertisements and as a result get the results grouped by car’s year of production, with 2-3 results in every group. And how about some range grouping, for example mileage ranges? Today we will accept the challenge.

New functionality request parameters description

Result grouping functionality is available since solr 3.3. Let’s get to know some of it’s request parameters we will surely need:

  • group – turn on and off result grouping
  • group.field – field name used to group search results. We have to be sure that the field used for grouping (year of production in our case) is single-valued and have the string/text type
  • group.query – query used to group results by ranges, for example mileage ranges
  • group.limit – the number of results to return for each group

This four basic parameters allow us to achieve what we want.

schema.xml changes

Possible schema.xml changes can be made in order to be sure that the group field is of the proper type (“string” or “text”). We would like to group our search results by “year” field, so let’s recall how the definition looks right now: 

<field name="year" type="tint" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" />

The field is of integer type. In order to be able to group results using this field, we create another “year” field, let’s call it “year_group”, which will have the string type: 

<field name="year_group" type="string" indexed="true" stored="false" />

and copy the content of the “year” field to the new field called “year_group”: 

<copyField source="year" dest="year_group"/>

That’s practically all the changes we should do in our schema.xml configration file.

Some sample data

Let’s now create some sample data in order to test the new functionality. We assume that we have some samples of Audi A4 car data. Two of them are year 2002, another two 2003 and the last one is 2006. Additionally, one of them has the mileage below 100 000 km, three of them have the mileage in the range between 100 000 km and 199 999 km and the last one has the mileage over 200 000 km: 

<add>
   <doc>
      <field name="id">1</field>
      <field name="make">Audi</field>
      <field name="model">A4</field>
      <field name="year">2002</field>
      <field name="price">22700</field>
      <field name="engine_size">1900</field>
      <field name="mileage">197000</field>
      <field name="colour">green</field>
      <field name="damaged">false</field>
      <field name="city">Koszalin</field>
      <field name="loc">54.12,16.11</field>
   </doc>
   <doc>
      <field name="id">2</field>
      <field name="make">Audi</field>
      <field name="model">A4</field>
      <field name="year">2003</field>
      <field name="price">27800</field>
      <field name="engine_size">1900</field>
      <field name="mileage">220000</field>
      <field name="colour">black</field>
      <field name="damaged">false</field>
      <field name="city">Bialystok</field>
      <field name="loc">53.08,23.09</field>
   </doc>
   <doc>
      <field name="id">3</field>
      <field name="make">Audi</field>
      <field name="model">A4</field>
      <field name="year">2002</field>
      <field name="price">21300</field>
      <field name="engine_size">1900</field>
      <field name="mileage">125000</field>
      <field name="colour">black</field>
      <field name="damaged">false</field>
      <field name="city">Szczecin</field>
      <field name="loc">53.25,14.35</field>
   </doc>
   <doc>
      <field name="id">4</field>
      <field name="make">Audi</field>
      <field name="model">A4</field>
      <field name="year">2003</field>
      <field name="price">30300</field>
      <field name="engine_size">1900</field>
      <field name="mileage">150000</field>
      <field name="colour">red</field>
      <field name="damaged">false</field>
      <field name="city">Gdansk</field>
      <field name="loc">54.21,18.40</field>
   </doc>
  <doc>
      <field name="id">5</field>
      <field name="make">Audi</field>
      <field name="model">A4</field>
      <field name="year">2006</field>
      <field name="price">32100</field>
      <field name="engine_size">1900</field>
      <field name="mileage">9900</field>
      <field name="colour">red</field>
      <field name="damaged">false</field>
      <field name="city">Swidnik</field>
      <field name="loc">52.15,21.00</field>
   </doc>
</add>

Let’s create queries

Using the parameters described at the beginning of the article, we create the “audi A4” query, which will show us some search results grouped by the year of production: 

?q=audi+a4&group=true&group.field=year_group&group.limit=2&fl=id,mileage,make,model,year

As we see, we have limited the results in every group to max 2. In response we would like to have only those fields, which will help us clearly and readably identify the documents, so: id, mileage, make, model and year. As a result we have the response: 

<lst name="grouped">
  <lst name="year_group">
    <int name="matches">5</int>
    <arr name="groups">
      <lst>
        <str name="groupValue">2002</str>
        <result name="doclist" numFound="2" start="0">
          <doc>
            <str name="id">1</str>
            <str name="make">Audi</str>
            <int name="mileage">197000</int>
            <str name="model">A4</str>
            <int name="year">2002</int>
          </doc>
          <doc>
            <str name="id">3</str>
            <str name="make">Audi</str>
            <int name="mileage">125000</int>
            <str name="model">A4</str>
            <int name="year">2002</int>
          </doc>
        </result>
      </lst>
      <lst>
        <str name="groupValue">2003</str>
        <result name="doclist" numFound="2" start="0">
          <doc>
            <str name="id">2</str>
            <str name="make">Audi</str>
            <int name="mileage">220000</int>
            <str name="model">A4</str>
            <int name="year">2003</int>
          </doc>
          <doc>
            <str name="id">4</str>
            <str name="make">Audi</str>
            <int name="mileage">150000</int>
            <str name="model">A4</str>
            <int name="year">2003</int>
          </doc>
        </result>
      </lst>
      <lst>
        <str name="groupValue">2006</str>
        <result name="doclist" numFound="1" start="0">
          <doc>
            <str name="id">5</str>
            <str name="make">Audi</str>
            <int name="mileage">9900</int>
            <str name="model">A4</str>
            <int name="year">2006</int>
          </doc>
        </result>
      </lst>
    </arr>
  </lst>
</lst>

Let’s analyse the response. We have 5 matches: 

<int name="matches">5</int>

The response has been split into 3 independent groups:

  1. <str name="groupValue">2002</str>

    where we have two (numFound=”2″) 2002 cars

  2. <str name="groupValue">2003</str>

    where we have two (numFound=”2″) 2003 cars

  3. <str name="groupValue">2006</str>

    where we have one (numFound=”1″) 2006 car

That’s correct!

Now let’s create query, which will group our search results by the mileage ranges. We assume that we have 3 ranges:

  1. <0km ; 99999km>
  2. <100000km ; 199999km>
  3. <200000km ; * >

Query: 

?q=audi+a4&group=true&group.query=mileage:[0+TO+99999]&group.query=mileage:[100000+TO+199999]&group.query=mileage:[200000+TO+*]&group.limit=3&fl=id,mileage,make,model,year

and response:

<lst name="grouped">
  <lst name="mileage:[0 TO 99999]">
    <int name="matches">5</int>
    <result name="doclist" numFound="1" start="0">
      <doc>
        <str name="id">5</str>
        <str name="make">Audi</str>
        <int name="mileage">9900</int>
        <str name="model">A4</str>
        <int name="year">2006</int>
      </doc>
    </result>
  </lst>
  <lst name="mileage:[100000 TO 199999]">
    <int name="matches">5</int>
    <result name="doclist" numFound="3" start="0">
      <doc>
        <str name="id">1</str>
        <str name="make">Audi</str>
        <int name="mileage">197000</int>
        <str name="model">A4</str>
        <int name="year">2002</int>
      </doc>
      <doc>
        <str name="id">3</str>
        <str name="make">Audi</str>
        <int name="mileage">125000</int>
        <str name="model">A4</str>
        <int name="year">2002</int>
      </doc>
      <doc>
        <str name="id">4</str>
        <str name="make">Audi</str>
        <int name="mileage">150000</int>
        <str name="model">A4</str>
        <int name="year">2003</int>
      </doc>
    </result>
  </lst>
  <lst name="mileage:[200000 TO *]">
    <int name="matches">5</int>
    <result name="doclist" numFound="1" start="0">
      <doc>
        <str name="id">2</str>
        <str name="make">Audi</str>
        <int name="mileage">220000</int>
        <str name="model">A4</str>
        <int name="year">2003</int>
      </doc>
    </result>
  </lst>
</lst>

Again we have 5 search results. In the first group there is a car with the mileage of 9900 km, in the second group there are cars with the mileage of 197000 km, 125000 km and 150000 km, and finally in the third group there is a car with the mileage of 220000km. We achieve what we wanted. Mission accomplished.

The end

Yet another functionality, this time search results grouping one, is now added to our car sale application. We will surely see what will be the users opinions 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners.
Cookies settings
Accept
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookies list
Cookie name Active

Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or place an order. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or mailing address.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs) To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you) To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs) To process transactions Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature To send periodic emails The email address you provide for order processing, will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart, understand and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders by contacting customer service. Google Analytics We use Google Analytics on our sites for anonymous reporting of site usage and for advertising on the site. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Registration

The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. Logging in using social networking credentials If you log-in to our sites using a Facebook log-in, you are granting permission to Facebook to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian identity. You can also use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. This will also allow us and Facebook to share your, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a Google log-in, you grant permission to Google to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth, sex and location which we will then use to form a Guardian identity. You may use your picture from Google as part of your profile. This also allows us to share your networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Google account settings. If you remove the Guardian from your Google settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a twitter log-in, we receive your avatar (the small picture that appears next to your tweets) and twitter username.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Updating your personal information

We offer a ‘My details’ page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site – simply click on the ‘My details’ link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.
Save settings
Cookies settings