Is it possible to boost 'newest' items using elasticsearch? (FOQElasticaBundle)

Question

I\'m currently implementing elasticsearch in my Symfony2 application via the FOQElasticaBundle and so far it\'s been working great based on boosts applied to various fields

Answer 1

Whew, after much experimentation and hours of trawling the Interweb I finally managed to get the desired behavior! (Full credit goes to Clinton Gormley.)

Mapping configuration:

mappings:
    title: { boost: 8 }
    summary: { boost: 5 }
    text: { boost: 3 }
    author:
    publishedAt: { type: date }

Here is the code using the PHP client, Elastica, to dynamically build the query to boost using the original mapping AND the published date:

$query = new \Elastica_Query_Bool();
$query->addMust(new \Elastica_Query_QueryString($queryString));

$ranges = array();
for ($i = 1; $i <= 5; $i++) {
    $date = new \DateTime("-$i month");

    $currentRange = new \Elastica_Query_Range();
    $currentRange->addField('publishedAt', array(
        'boost' => (6 - $i),
        'gte' => $date->getTimestamp()
    ));

    $ranges[] = $currentRange->toArray();
}

$query->addShould($ranges);

/** @var $pagerfanta Pagerfanta */
$pagerfanta = $this->getFinder()->findPaginated($query);

And for those of you more interested in the raw elasticsearch query (only with 3 date ranges for brevity)...

curl -XPOST 'http://localhost:9200/website/story/_search?pretty=true' -d '
{
  "query" : {
    "bool" : {
      "must" : {
        query_string: {
          query: ""
        }
      },
      "should" : [
        {
          "range" : {
            "publishedAt" : {
              "boost" : 5,
              "gte" : "<1 month ago>"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "range" : {
            "publishedAt" : {
              "boost" : 4,
              "gte" : "<2 months ago>"
            }
          }
        },
        {
          "range" : {
            "publishedAt" : {
              "boost" : 3,
              "gte" : "<3 months ago>"
            }
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}'