Filter nested array values that only has hits

Open Q&A
#1

Hello everyone! :innocent:

I am fairly new to Algolia and so far loving the experience. But I stucked with a problem, and simple googling and toggling Index Configuration did not help.

Example of my data:

{
objectID: "asd-asd-asd"
_type: "page",
title: "fruits",
modules: [
 {
  _id: "1",
  title: "mango",
  _type: "mango_module"
  description: "sweet and tasty",
  text: "long text"
 },
 {
  _id: "2",
  title: "apple",
  _type: "apple_module",
  description: "round",
  text: "long text"
 },
// ...
]
}

Imagine, that search query is ā€œappleā€. Result object must be:

{
objectID: "asd-asd-asd"
_type: "page",
title: "fruits",
modules: [
 {
  _id: "2",
  _type: "apple_module"
  title: "apple",
  description: "round",
  text: "long text"
 }
]
}

Response object should return ā€œpageā€ object, but filter out all values from ā€œmodulesā€ array which did not ā€œhitā€ the search query. If search query is ā€œlong textā€, modules array must contain both ā€œappleā€ and ā€œmangoā€, because they both have text: "long text"

It also would be great, if there is a hit on ā€œpageā€ string property, to return all modules without filtering, but itā€™s not crusial, I think.

I would appreciate any help, and answer every question! Thanks to everyone in advance!

#2

@Mehoff welcome to the community!

Unfortunately, this is a limitation with nested objects, however, you can solve this by separating out your modules into individual records and referencing the parent within the record instead.

For example:

[
  {
    "objectID": "module-1",
    "title": "mango",
    "_type": "mango_module",
    "description": "sweet and tasty",
    "text": "long text",
    "parent": {
      "objectID": "asd-asd-asd",
      "_type": "page",
      "title": "fruits"
    }
  },
  // ...
]

Alternatively, it would be possible to filter out those other modules using transformItems if you are using one of our InstantSearch libraries. Itā€™s also possible to filter them out using our API Clients, but I can give more information on those if you need it.

Happy to help further, let us know! Thanks!

#3

Hello Michael! Thank you for fast answer!
If you got time, and I am not too annoying at this point, I would love to see a filter using API Client. We are using algoliasearch Node.js package on front-end.

#4

@Mehoff

If you are using an API Client, we can just modify the hits as they come over. Something like this should work:

index.search('mango')
    .then(({ hits }) => {
        hits.forEach(hit => {
            hit.modules = hit.modules.filter((moduleHit, moduleHitIndex) => {
                return moduleHit.title !== hit._highlightResult.modules[moduleHitIndex].title.value
            })
        })

        console.log(JSON.stringify(hits, null, 2))
    })
    .catch(err => console.error(err))

This would filter out any modules where the titles didnā€™t match. This is a quite limited implementation but you could adjust it to check any of the fields you would want.

Happy to help further, let us know! Thanks!