Sorting modes

There are the following result sorting modes available:

• SPH_SORT_RELEVANCE mode, that sorts by relevance in descending order (best matches first);
• SPH_SORT_ATTR_DESC mode, that sorts by an attribute in descending order (bigger attribute values first);
• SPH_SORT_ATTR_ASC mode, that sorts by an attribute in ascending order (smaller attribute values first);
• SPH_SORT_TIME_SEGMENTS mode, that sorts by time segments (last hour/day/week/month) in descending order, and then by relevance in descending order;
• SPH_SORT_EXTENDED mode, that sorts by SQL-like combination of columns in ASC/DESC order;
• SPH_SORT_EXPR mode, that sorts by an arithmetic expression.

SPH_SORT_RELEVANCE ignores any additional parameters and always sorts matches by relevance rank. All other modes require an additional sorting clause, with the syntax depending on specific mode.

SPH_SORT_ATTR_ASC, SPH_SORT_ATTR_DESC and SPH_SORT_TIME_SEGMENTS modes require simply an attribute name.

SPH_SORT_RELEVANCE is equivalent to sorting by "@weight DESC, @id ASC" in extended sorting mode, SPH_SORT_ATTR_ASC is equivalent to "attribute ASC, @weight DESC, @id ASC", and SPH_SORT_ATTR_DESC to "attribute DESC, @weight DESC, @id ASC" respectively.

SPH_SORT_TIME_SEGMENTS mode

In SPH_SORT_TIME_SEGMENTS mode, attribute values are split into so-called time segments, and then sorted by time segment first, and by relevance second.

The segments are calculated according to the current timestamp at the time when the search is performed, so the results would change over time. The segments are as follows:

• last hour,
• last day,
• last week,
• last month,
• last 3 months,
• everything else.

These segments are hardcoded, but it is trivial to change them if necessary.

This mode was added to support searching through blogs, news headlines, etc. When using time segments, recent records would be ranked higher because of segment, but within the same segment, more relevant records would be ranked higher - unlike sorting by just the timestamp attribute, which would not take relevance into account at all.

SPH_SORT_EXTENDED mode

In SPH_SORT_EXTENDED mode, you can specify an SQL-like sort expression with up to 5 attributes (including internal attributes), eg:

@relevance DESC, price ASC, @id DESC

Both internal attributes (that are computed by the engine on the fly) and user attributes that were configured for this index are allowed. Internal attribute names must start with magic @-symbol; user attribute names can be used as is. In the example above, @relevance and @id are internal attributes and price is user-specified.

Known internal attributes are:

• @id (match ID)
• @weight (match weight)
• @rank (match weight)
• @relevance (match weight)
• @random (return results in random order)

@rank and @relevance are just additional aliases to @weight.

SPH_SORT_EXPR mode

Expression sorting mode lets you sort the matches by an arbitrary arithmetic expression, involving attribute values, internal attributes (@id and @weight), arithmetic operations, and a number of built-in functions. Here's an example:

$cl->SetSortMode ( SPH_SORT_EXPR,
    "@weight + ( user_karma + ln(pageviews) )*0.1" );