Sitecore Search Predicate Builder multiple keyword search with boosting not working as desired

Question

I have sitecore pages / lucene documents with the following fields:

• Title
• Filename
• Content
• File Contents

I'm creating a search for these and have the following requirements:

• Hits containing the whole phrase in the title field should be returned first.
• Hits containing the whole phrase in the filename field should be returned second.
• Hits containing the whole phrase in the content should be returned third
• Hits containing the whole phrase in the file contents should be returned fourth
• Hits containing all of the keywords (in any order) in the title field should be returned fifth
• Hits containing all of the keywords (in any order) in the filename field should be returned sixth
• Hits containing all of the keywords (in any order) in the content should be returned seventh.
• Hits containing all of the keywords (in any order) in the file contents should be returned eighth.

Here is what I've got:

    public static Expression<Func<T, bool>> GetSearchTermPredicate<T>(string searchTerm) 
        where T : ISearchableItem
    {
        var actualPhrasePredicate = PredicateBuilder.True<T>()
            .Or(r => r.Title.Contains(searchTerm).Boost(2f))
            .Or(r => r.FileName.Contains(searchTerm).Boost(1.5f))
            .Or(r => r.Content.Contains(searchTerm))
            .Or(r => r.DocumentContents.Contains(searchTerm));

        var individualWordsPredicate = PredicateBuilder.False<T>();

        foreach (var term in searchTerm.Split(' '))
        {
            individualWordsPredicate 
                = individualWordsPredicate.And(r => 
                   r.Title.Contains(term).Boost(2f)
                || r.FileName.Contains(term).Boost(1.5f)
                || r.Content.Contains(term)
                || r.DocumentContents.Contains(term));
        }

        return PredicateBuilder.Or(actualPhrasePredicate.Boost(2f), 
            individualWordsPredicate);
    }

The actual phrase part seems to work well. Hits with the full phrase in the title are returned first. However, if I remove a word from the middle of the phrase, no results are returned.

i.e. I have a page with a title "The England football team are dreadful", but when I search with "The football team are dreadful", it doesn't find the page.

Note: pages can have documents attached to them, so I want to boost the filenames too but not as highly as the page title.

Frizette

Answer 1

I managed to get this to work with the following:

    public static Expression<Func<T, bool>> GetSearchTermPredicate<T>(string searchTerm) 
        where T : ISearchableItem
    {
        var actualPhraseInTitlePredicate = PredicateBuilder.True<T>()
            .And(r => r.Title.Contains(searchTerm));

        var actualPhraseInFileNamePredicate = PredicateBuilder.True<T>()
            .And(r => r.FileName.Contains(searchTerm));

        var actualPhraseInContentPredicate = PredicateBuilder.True<T>()
            .And(r => r.Content.Contains(searchTerm));

        var actualPhraseInDocumentPredicate = PredicateBuilder.True<T>()
            .And(r => r.DocumentContents.Contains(searchTerm));

        var terms = searchTerm.Split(' ');

        var titleContainsAllTermsPredicate = PredicateBuilder.True<T>();

        foreach (var term in terms)
            titleContainsAllTermsPredicate 
                = titleContainsAllTermsPredicate.And(r => r.Title.Contains(term).Boost(2f));

        var fileNameAllTermsContains = PredicateBuilder.True<T>();

        foreach (var term in terms)
            fileNameAllTermsContains 
                = fileNameAllTermsContains.And(r => r.FileName.Contains(term));

        var contentContainsAllTermsPredicate = PredicateBuilder.True<T>();

        foreach (var term in terms)
            contentContainsAllTermsPredicate 
                = contentContainsAllTermsPredicate.And(r => r.Content.Contains(term));

        var documentContainsAllTermsPredicate = PredicateBuilder.True<T>();

        foreach (var term in terms)
            documentContainsAllTermsPredicate 
                = documentContainsAllTermsPredicate.And(r => r.DocumentContents.Contains(term));


        var predicate = actualPhraseInTitlePredicate.Boost(3f)
            .Or(actualPhraseInFileNamePredicate.Boost(2.5f))
            .Or(actualPhraseInContentPredicate.Boost(2f))
            .Or(actualPhraseInDocumentPredicate.Boost(1.5f))
            .Or(titleContainsAllTermsPredicate.Boost(1.2f))
            .Or(fileNameAllTermsContains.Boost(1.2f))
            .Or(contentContainsAllTermsPredicate)
            .Or(documentContainsAllTermsPredicate);

        return predicate;
    }

It's obviously quite a bit more code, but I think separating the predicates makes more sense for boosting to work effectively.

The main issue with the previous code was two fold:

1. PredicateBuilder.Or(actualPhrasePredicate.Boost(2f), individualWordsPredicate) doesn't seem to include the predicate being Or'd. When doing a .ToString() on the resulting joined predicate, the expression didn't contain anything for the individualWordsPredicate
2. After fixing that it still didn't work, and this was because I was using PredicateBuilder.False<T>() for the individualWordsPredicate. When looking at the expression it was basically producing (False AND Field.Contains(keyword)) which of course will never evaluate to true. Using .True<T>() fixed this.

Frizette

Do you remember why you had to boost both the inline predicate, as well as boosting again when you "or" them all together? – Sholes