facet

Specifies one or more fields for which to get facet information, and options that control how the facet information is returned. Each specified field must be facet-enabled in the domain configuration. The fields and options are specified in JSON using the form {"FIELD":{"OPTION":VALUE,"OPTION:"STRING"},"FIELD":{"OPTION":VALUE,"OPTION":"STRING"}}.

You can specify the following faceting options:

• buckets specifies an array of the facet values or ranges to count. Ranges are specified using the same syntax that you use to search for a range of values. For more information, see Searching for a Range of Values in the Amazon CloudSearch Developer Guide. Buckets are returned in the order they are specified in the request. The sort and size options are not valid if you specify buckets.

• size specifies the maximum number of facets to include in the results. By default, Amazon CloudSearch returns counts for the top 10. The size parameter is only valid when you specify the sort option; it cannot be used in conjunction with buckets.

• sort specifies how you want to sort the facets in the results: bucket or count. Specify bucket to sort alphabetically or numerically by facet value (in ascending order). Specify count to sort by the facet counts computed for each facet value (in descending order). To retrieve facet counts for particular values or ranges of values, use the buckets option instead of sort.

If no facet options are specified, facet counts are computed for all field values, the facets are sorted by facet count, and the top 10 facets are returned in the results.

To count particular buckets of values, use the buckets option. For example, the following request uses the buckets option to calculate and return facet counts by decade.

{"year":{"buckets":["[1970,1979]","[1980,1989]","[1990,1999]","[2000,2009]","[2010,}"]}}

To sort facets by facet count, use the count option. For example, the following request sets the sort option to count to sort the facet values by facet count, with the facet values that have the most matching documents listed first. Setting the size option to 3 returns only the top three facet values.

{"year":{"sort":"count","size":3}}

To sort the facets by value, use the bucket option. For example, the following request sets the sort option to bucket to sort the facet values numerically by year, with earliest year listed first.

{"year":{"sort":"bucket"}}

For more information, see Getting and Using Facet Information in the Amazon CloudSearch Developer Guide.