Cloudant search - non-intuitive handling of counts parameter

[glynnbird]

In the sample code below

var cloudant = require('cloudant')('https://reader.cloudant.com');
var guitars = cloudant.db.use('guitars');


guitars.search('search', 'search', {q:'*:*',limit:0, counts: ["brand"] }, function(err, data) {
 if (err)
 throw err
 console.log(err,data);
});

instead I have to do:

guitars.search('search', 'search', {q:'*:*',limit:0, counts: JSON.stringify(["brand"]) }, function(err, data) {
 ...

I think our library should detect if counts is provided as an array and JSON.stringify it for the user.

[glynnbird]

Agreed to do this, because it's helpful.

[jhs]

Oh weird, we have to supply {counts:'["brand"]', ...}? Yes that is odd.

[glynnbird]

This would need doing in the Nano project.

[glynnbird]

Looking more closely at this, counts is not the only parameter that Cloudant expects to be passed as a JSON string and that the user of this library may expect to be able to pass in as an array or an object. For the Cloudant search API we have

• counts e.g. counts=["brand","colour"]
• drilldown e.g. drilldown=["brand",fender"]&drilldown=["colour","red"]
• group_sort
• ranges e.g ranges={"price": {"expensive": 278682,"cheap": 257023}}
• sort e.g. sort="-price"

It would seem odd to do this ticket for counts but leave the other fields as they are. What do we think?

I was going to suggest something like:

 for(var i in qs) { 
 if (typeof qs[i] !== "string") { 
 qs[i] = JSON.stringify(qs[i]); 
 }
 }

but where does that leave things like sort which are stringified strings?

[jhs]

Fixed in Nano. @glynnbird Is the list you made above comprehensive?

[glynnbird]

It's comprehensive for the search function and its underlying endpoint @jhs

[kaushik-evani]

Hi. I have encountered a similar issue with the parameters "group_field" and "sort" as well. They dont seem to be working with the node APIs but they do work perfectly fine if I directly use cloudant's http APIs. For example,
guitars.search('search', 'search', {q:':', group_field: "brand", sort: "manufactureDate" }, function(err, data) {
// Some code here
});
For the above code it does not return any rows.
Thanks a lot.