Faceted Search

When displaying a large amount of data, often paging is used to make viewing the data manageable. However it's also useful to give some context of the entire data-set and a easy way to drill-down into particular categories. The common approach to doing this is "faceted search", as shown in the image below. Note how the count of each category within the current search is across the top.

To achieve this in RavenDB, lets say you have a document like this:

{ 
    DateOfListing: "2000-09-01T00:00:00.0000000+01:00" 
    Manufacturer: "Jessops" 
    Model: "blah" 
    Cost: 717.502206059872 
    Zoom: 9 
    Megapixels: 10.4508949012733 
    ImageStabiliser: false 
}

Step 1

You need to setup your facet definitions and store them in RavenDB as a document, like so:

_facets = new List<Facet>
                        {
                            new Facet {Name = "Manufacturer"},
                            new Facet
                                {
                                    Name = "Cost_Range",
                                    Mode = FacetMode.Ranges,
                                    Ranges =
                                        {
                                            "[NULL TO Dx200.0]",
                                            "[Dx200.0 TO Dx400.0]",
                                            "[Dx400.0 TO Dx600.0]",
                                            "[Dx600.0 TO Dx800.0]",
                                            "[Dx800.0 TO NULL]",
                                        }
                                },
                            new Facet
                                {
                                    Name = "Megapixels_Range",
                                    Mode = FacetMode.Ranges,
                                    Ranges =
                                        {
                                            "[NULL TO Dx3.0]",
                                            "[Dx3.0 TO Dx7.0]",
                                            "[Dx7.0 TO Dx10.0]",
                                            "[Dx10.0 TO NULL]",
                                        }
                                }
                        };
                        
session.Store(new FacetSetup { Id = "facets/CameraFacets", Facets = _facets });

This tells RavenDB that you would like to get the following facets.

• For the Manufacturer field look at the documents and return a count for each unique Term found
• For the Cost field, return the count of the following ranges:
  • Cost <= 200.0
  • 200.0 <= Cost <= 400.0
  • 400.0 <= Cost <= 600.0
  • 600.0 <= Cost <= 800.0
  • Cost >= 800.0
• For the Megapixels field, return the count of the following ranges:
  • Megapixels <= 3.0
  • 3.0 <= Megapixels <= 7.0
  • 7.0 <= Megapixels <= 10.0
  • Megapixels >= 10.0

Step 2

Next you need to create an index to work against, this can be setup like so:

store.DatabaseCommands.PutIndex("CameraCost",
                            new IndexDefinition
                            {
                                Map = @"from camera in docs 
                                    select new 
                                    { 
                                        camera.Manufacturer, 
                                        camera.Model, 
                                        camera.Cost,
                                        camera.DateOfListing,
                                        camera.Megapixels
                                    }"
                            });

Step 3

Finally you can write the following code and you get back the data below.

var facetResults = s.Query<Camera>("CameraCost") 
                        .Where(x => x.Cost >= 100 && x.Cost <= 300 ) 
                        .ToFacets("facets/CameraFacets");

This is equivalent to hitting the following Url:

http://localhost:8080/facets/CameraCost?facetDoc=facets/CameraFacets&query=Cost_Range:[Dx100 TO Dx300.0]

{
   Manufacturer: [
      {
         Range: 'canon',
         Count: 42
      },
      {
         Range: 'jessops',
         Count: 50
      },
      {
         Range: 'nikon',
         Count: 46
      },
      {
         Range: 'phillips',
         Count: 44
      },
      {
         Range: 'sony',
         Count: 35
      }
   ],
   Cost_Range: [
      {
         Range: '[NULL TO Dx200.0]',
         Count: 115
      },
      {
         Range: '[Dx200.0 TO Dx400.0]',
         Count: 102
      }
   ],
   Megapixels_Range: [
      {
         Range: '[NULL TO Dx3.0]',
         Count: 42
      },
      {
         Range: '[Dx3.0 TO Dx7.0]',
         Count: 79
      },
      {
         Range: '[Dx7.0 TO Dx10.0]',
         Count: 82
      },
      {
         Range: '[Dx10.0 TO NULL]',
         Count: 14
      }
   ]
}