Colleen, Thanks for the info. It looks like the problem is indeed using a non-default collation. Here's a (real but greatly simplified for illustration) example document:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <doc xmlns="http://digital.library.ptsem.edu/ia";> <metadata> <id>apostlescreedlor00geeg</id> <name>Geegby, W. B.</name> <title>The Apostles' Creed and the Lord's prayer in the Kru dialect</title> <date>1840</date> <language code="eng">English</language> <class>Old Testament</class> </metadata> </doc> I have range element indexes on date (gYear), language (string with default collation), and name (string with collation http://marklogic.com/collation//AS/T0020). In the <options> to search:search(), my (again, real but simplified for illustration) sort operator looks like this: <operator name="sort"> <state name="name"> <sort-order type="xs:string" collation="http://marklogic.com/collation//AS/T0020";> <element ns="http://digital.library.ptsem.edu/ia"; name="name"/> </sort-order> </state> <state name="date"> <sort-order type="xs:gYear"> <element ns="http://digital.library.ptsem.edu/ia"; name="date"/> </sort-order> </state> <state name="language"> <sort-order type="xs:string"> <element ns="http://digital.library.ptsem.edu/ia"; name="language"/> </sort-order> </state> </operator> If I sort by date (if the qtext passed to search:search() includes "sort:date") then I get empty last (documents with no <date> element occur last in the search results), as I would expect and prefer. Similarly, if I sort by language I get empty last. But if I sort by name, I get empty first. Any way around this other than switching to the default collation for <name>? Many thanks, Greg On Feb 20, 2012, at 7:47 PM, Colleen Whitney wrote: > Hi Greg, > > The Search API doesn't have support as yet for specifying "empty least" or > "empty greatest" on sorting. > > You can specify a *direction* as an attribute on the <sort-order> element > (direction="ascending" or direction="descending"). When descending, the > server defaults to empty least, and when ascending it defaults to empty > greatest, so I think it *should* actually default to them coming out last. > But collation is important here, and it's possible that the collation you're > using here could be involved. If you have a very small set of test "name" > elements you can share, along with how they're sorting, it might be helpful > in understanding what you're seeing. > > --Colleen > > ________________________________________ > From: [email protected] > [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Murray, Gregory > [[email protected]] > Sent: Monday, February 20, 2012 10:37 AM > To: MarkLogic Developer Discussion > Subject: [MarkLogic Dev General] Search API results: sorting empty last > > When using the Search API and using a sort operator such as this: > > <search:operator name="sort"> > <search:state name="name"> > <search:sort-order type="xs:string" > collation="http://marklogic.com/collation//AS/T0020";> > <search:element ns="http://example.com/ns"; name="name"/> > </search:sort-order> > </search:state> > <!-- ... --> > </search:operator> > > is there a way to specify that documents with a missing or empty <name> > element should occur *last* in the sorted search results? It appears that > empty values occur at the top of the search results by default. > > Thanks, > Greg > > _______________________________________________ > General mailing list > [email protected] > http://developer.marklogic.com/mailman/listinfo/general > _______________________________________________ > General mailing list > [email protected] > http://developer.marklogic.com/mailman/listinfo/general _______________________________________________ General mailing list [email protected] http://developer.marklogic.com/mailman/listinfo/general
