Filters

There are a number of ways to apply filters to your search results. Filters can be applied on:

client - Highlighting results on the client
server - Applying user level filtering

Applying Filters on the Client

Filters can be applied on the client by using the filters property on the configure component on Instantsearch.

Setup

To apply filters on the client, you must first setup the filter in either the facet_attributes and filter_attributes configuration in your application settings.

Below is an example of a configuration that has a facet_attributes and filter_attributes setup.

{
  facet_attributes: [
    { attribute: 'author', field: 'author.keyword', type: 'string' },
    { attribute: 'price', field: 'price', type: 'numeric' },
  ],
  filter_attributes: [
    { attribute: 'publisher', field: 'publisher.keyword', type: 'string' },
    { attribute: 'genre', field: 'genre.keyword', type: 'string' },
    { attribute: 'date', field: 'date.field', type: 'date' },
    { attribute: 'nestedField', field: 'price', type: 'string', nestedPath: 'nested' }
  ],
  result_attributes: [],
  search_attributes: []
}

import { Configure } from 'react-instantsearch';
 
<Configure
  filters="price:[90 TO *]"
/>

Filters can be applied on the client by using the filters property on the configure component on Instantsearch.

Use the attribute property to specify the field you want to filter on.

Nested fields are not supported in the filters property. To filter on nested fields, use facetFilters or numericFilters property.

Filter Syntax

Numeric & Facet Filters

Numeric & Facet filters are typically used by widgets.

You can also add numeric filters or facet Filters to the search by using the numericFilters or facetFilters property on the configure component on Instantsearch.

import { Configure } from 'react-instantsearch';
 
<Configure
  facetFilters={["author:John"]}
  numericFilters={["price>10", "price<20"]}
/>

Applying Filters on the Server

Filters can be applied on the server by using the getBaseFilters function within the handleRequest function.

Examples could include:

Filtering out documents that are not published
Filtering out documents that the user doesn't have access to

Below is an example of filtering documents that are not published.

Attributes cannot be used within getBaseFilters function. You must use the field property instead. This is because the field property is the actual field name in Elasticsearch.

The function must return an array of filters. Each filter is an object that follows the Elasticsearch Query DSL (opens in a new tab).

Below is an example of filtering documents that are not published using the status field.

const results = await apiClient.handleRequest(req.body, {
  getBaseFilters: () => {
    return [
      {
        bool: {
          must: {
            term: {
              status: "published",
            },
          },
        },
      },
    ];
  },
});

Numeric Facets Filter By String value