“Car sale application”– Result Grouping, two additional parameters description (part 7)

In the last “car sale application” related post we have described the result grouping functionality. Today I would like to show you how easily we can determine the groups amount and how to sort documents within every group.

Requirements specification

I would like to be able to create a grouping query, that will show me the number of generated groups and provide only one result within every group – the one with the lowest price in its year group.

New functionality request parameters description

What we need is:

• group.ngroups – boolean type parameter that allows us to include the number of generated groups
• group.sort – parameter describing how to sort documents within a group

Let’s create query

Using the query example from the previous post, let’s add two new parameters:

?q=audi+a4&group=true&group.field=year_group&group.limit=1&fl=id,mileage,make,model,year,price&group.ngroups=true&group.sort=price+asc

As you see, we’ve also set the group.limit parameter to 1 (in order to have the only one result within every group) and extended the value of fl parameter by adding the price field. As a result we have the response:

<lst name="grouped">
  <lst name="year_group">
    <int name="matches">5</int>
    <int name="ngroups">3</int>
    <arr name="groups">
      <lst>
        <str name="groupValue">2002</str>
        <result name="doclist" numFound="2" start="0">
          <doc>
            <str name="id">3</str>
            <str name="make">Audi</str>
            <int name="mileage">125000</int>
            <str name="model">A4</str>
            <float name="price">21300.0</float>
            <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>
            <float name="price">27800.0</float>
            <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>
            <float name="price">32100.0</float>
            <int name="year">2006</int>
          </doc>
        </result>
      </lst>
    </arr>
  </lst>
</lst>

As we see in the response, we have a new element that shows us how many groups are generated:

<int name="ngroups">3</int>

We also have only one document in each year group – the car with the lowest price in its year group. You don’t believe me ? Look at the query responses from the previous post and compare the prices 🙂

The end

It was a fast review of yet two another grouping parameters. Big thanks to David Martin who gave me the subject by asking some questions in the previous post 🙂