Configure Date Facets

This task shows you how to:

See Also
Date Facets

Define Dynamic Date Facets

Dynamic date facets automatically adjust the granularity of the date display, according to the maximum number of facet values specified, and the date range for your search results.

  1. Follow the steps to create a new facet, selecting Dynamic date for the Type field. For details, see Create Facets in the Search Logic.
  2. For Expression, define an expression based on a RAM-based index field for this facet.
  3. For Units, select the granularity you want to be able to display. For example, select Year, Month and Day.
  4. (Optional) In Max. categories, change how many date values this facet can display. By default this is 40.

    The lower this number, the more likely dates display at a lower granularity (years instead of months, or weeks instead of days). Displaying lower-granularity dates is useful when representing large date ranges in widgets.

  5. Select Enable ISO 8601 compliance, to get weeks starting on Monday and a few rules determining the first and last week of each year. Use compatible Output formats. Typically, use %V instead of %U otherwise week numbering is not consistent with grouping.
  6. Click Apply.
  7. In the Mashup UI, perform a search that returns a date range that spans several months or weeks.

As you refine on these search results, the dynamic date facet display on the Refinement panel. For an example of how dates adjust when displayed in a chart, see Generate Missing Dates, Step 8 and Step 9.

Generate Missing Dates

  1. In the dynamic date facet setup options, for Sort by check that Date is selected.
  2. Select Generate missing intervals, if not already selected.
  3. Click Apply.
  4. In Mashup Builder, add a line chart widget to your /search page:
    1. Go to the search page and select the Design view
    2. In the Widgets panel, expand Visualizations > Charts, and drag the Line Chart widget on to the page.
  5. Click the header of the Line Chart widget to fill in the required properties:
    1. For Facet type, select normal.
    2. For X, select the dynamic date facet from the list at left. In our example, this is lastmodified date.
    3. Under Aggregation, select count.
    4. For Chart type, select line.
    5. For Axis, select 1.

  6. Click Preview to make sure that the chart looks as expected.
  7. Click Apply.
  8. In the Mashup UI, perform a search that returns a date range that you know includes some missing dates.

    For our example, in an 11-month period, we only have values for Sept 2012, Nov 2011, and Oct 2011, but the line remains unbroken.

    Thanks to the Generate missing intervals option, the Line Chart displays the missing months on the X-axis, with zero values.



    Note: While the chart widget displays auto-generated missing dates, the Refinement panels does not. It only displays facet dates that exist in the underlying index field.

  9. Refine your search results to shorten the matching documents’ date range.

    In our example, we refine on Sept 2012. Once again, missing dates (Sept 9 and 8) are auto-generated and populated with a value of 0.

    Also, notice how the date display becomes more granular as the time period gets shorter. Before that, the X-axis displayed points as MMYYYY. Now it displays YYYY/MM/DD.



Change the Display Format for the Dates

The output format is defined using UNIX date syntax.

  1. In the dynamic date facet setup options, expand Output formats.
  2. Modify the various output formats. See Indexing Options for Date Properties.
  3. Click Apply.