Curation

While Typesense makes it really easy and intuitive to deliver great search results, sometimes you might want to promote certain documents over others. Or, you might want to exclude certain documents from a query's result set.

Using overrides, you can include or exclude specific documents for a given query.

Precedence

When using Synonyms and Overrides together, Overrides are handled first since the rules can contain instructions to replace the query. Synonyms will then work on the modified query.

Create or update an override

Including or excluding documents

In the following example, we will:

1. Use the includes condition to place the documents with ids 422 and 54 in the first and second positions respectively.
2. Use the excludes condition to remove the document with id 287 from the results.

Typesense allows you to use both includes and excludes or just one of them for curation.

Note how we are applying these overrides to an exact match of the query apple. Instead, if we want to match all queries containing the word apple, we will use the contains match instead.

Sample Response

Dynamic filtering

In the following example, we will apply a filter dynamically to a query that matches a rule.

With this override in effect, any query that contains a brand will automatically be filtered on the matching brand directly. In addition, the brand will also be removed from the original query tokens, so that the search is made only on the remaining tokens.

For example, if someone searches for sony ericsson phone, the query will be re-written as phone and a sony ericsson brand filter will be directly applied. If you don't wish to remove matching tokens from the query, set remove_matched_tokens to false. By default, this parameter is set to true.

Curation and filtering

includes is used to fix documents at certain positions in the results, but it's possible for these documents to be filtered out when using filter_curated_hits: true.

When this happens, Typesense "slides" any remaining documents added by includes up in the results. For example, say you have a collection of product records that look like this when sorted on a ranking field:

1. ABC123 (in stock)
2. DEF456 (sold out)
3. XYZ999 (sold out)
4. QWE127 (in stock)
5. BNM847 (in stock)
6. JKL999 (in stock)
7. CVB333 (in stock)

Let's say an override is created that uses includes to pin the following records to specific positions. The override also has filter_curated_hits set to true, so the documents added by includes can be filtered out if they don't match any filter_by conditions:

- QWE127 pinned to position 1
- DEF456 pinned to position 2
- CVB333 pinned to position 3

When this override is applied to a search, the result will be:

1. QWE127 (in stock) <- Position set by includes
2. DEF456 (sold out) <- Position set by includes
3. CVB333 (in stock) <- Position set by includes
4. ABC123 (in stock)
5. XYZ999 (sold out)
6. BNM847 (in stock)
7. JKL999 (in stock)

If a status:=in stock filter is then added to the search, the sold-out records are removed. This includes DEF456, even though it's one of the records the override is trying to add via includes (because it's out of stock and the override has filter_curated_hits: true). The end result is that the two in-stock records from the override appear at positions 1 and 2, with the remaining records below them:

1. QWE127 (in stock) <- Position set by includes
2. CVB333 (in stock) <- Position set by includes (moved up)
3. ABC123 (in stock)
4. BNM847 (in stock)
5. JKL999 (in stock)

Document CVB333 "slides up" to position 2, to take the place of DEF456 (which has been filtered out).

Override parameters

Definition

PUT ${TYPESENSE_HOST}/collections/:collection/overrides/:id

Parameters

Parameter	Required	Description
rule.query	One of either rule.query or rule.filter_by is required.	Indicates what search queries should be overridden.
rule.match	no	Indicates whether the match on the query term should be exact or contains. Required when rule.query is set.
rule.filter_by	One of either rule.query or rule.filter_by is required.	Indicates that the override should apply when the filter_by parameter in a search query exactly matches the string specified here (including backticks, spaces, brackets, etc).
excludes	no	List of document ids that should be excluded from the search results.
includes	no	List of document ids that should be included in the search results with their corresponding positions.
filter_by	no	A filter by clause that is applied to any search query that matches the override rule.
sort_by	no	A sort by clause that is applied to any search query that matches the override rule.
replace_query	no	Replaces the current search query with this value, when the search query matches the override rule.
remove_matched_tokens	no	Indicates whether search query tokens that exist in the override's rule should be removed from the search query. Default: true.
filter_curated_hits	no	When set to true, the filter conditions of the query is applied to the curated records as well. Default: false.
effective_from_ts	no	A Unix timestamp that indicates the date/time from which the override will be active. You can use this to create override rules that start applying from a future point in time.
effective_to_ts	no	A Unix timestamp that indicates the date/time until which the override will be active. You can use this to create override rules that stop applying after a period of time.
stop_processing	no	When set to true, override processing will stop at the first matching rule. When set to false override processing will continue and multiple override actions will be triggered in sequence. Overrides are processed in the lexical sort order of their id field. Default: true.

List all overrides

Listing all overrides associated with a given collection.

Sample Response

Definition

GET ${TYPESENSE_HOST}/collections/:collection/overrides

Retrieve an override

Fetch an individual override associated with a collection.

Sample Response

Definition

GET ${TYPESENSE_HOST}/collections/:collection/overrides/:id

Delete an override

Deleting an override associated with a collection.

Sample Response

Definition

DELETE ${TYPESENSE_HOST}/collections/:collection/overrides/:id