Search - can't sort by date

[AtmoFX]

Bug description

Continuation of this discussion

Apparently, search:results array can only return result sorted by relevance, when I expected, from 2383, that adding sort='date:desc' would do the trick.

I also tried to add 'property_weights' => ['date' => 1], to the index used for the search, to no avail.

How to reproduce

I posted an example Statamic - Search, sort by date repo from a blank site.

There are 3 articles posted on 3 consecutive days. All 3 articles contain the word "text" but the middle article contains it twice so that it is expected to be more relevant than the other 2 when searching for that word.

The code for the search page (template search.antlers.html) is:

<ol>
    {{ search:results index="testindex" sort='date:desc' }}
        <li>{{ date }} / {{ title }} </li>
    {{ /search:results }}
</ol>

testindex is configured like so:

        'testindex' => [
            'driver' => 'local',
            'searchables' => ['collection:test'],
            'fields' => ['title', 'content'],
            'min_characters' => 3,
            'property_weights' => [ 
                'date' => 1
            ],
        ],

1. Goto URL /search?q=text. The desired order (newest to oldest) of the returned articles is 3, 2, 1.
   They will be returned in order 2, 1, 3, though.
2. Removing sort='date:desc' from the template has no impact
3. Changing the index definition to include 0, 1 or several of the following lines has no impact either (at least, no impact on the order but definitely an undesired impact on the search result, see comments:
   • 'property_weights' => [ 'date' => 1],
   • 'include_properties' => ['date'], (with this line, the search returns no post; the example site from the repo will just display the title of the search page itself)
   • 'include_properties' => ['title', 'tags', 'content', 'date'], (same unsorted results)
   • 'sort_by_score' => false,
   • 'sort_by_score' => true, (to make it explicit)
   • 'group_by_category' => true, (out of desperation)
   • Transforming the date to a number in the hope it can be multiplied by the property_weights:

   'transformers' => [ 
       'date' => function ($date) { 
           $duration = date_diff(date_create("1900-01-01"), $date); 
           return (new DateTime())->setTimeStamp(0)->add($duration)->getTimeStamp();
       }
   ]
   

   (Not too sure about this one but Statamic lets me update the index so I assume it was OK).

Logs

No response

Environment

Environment
Application Name: Statamic
Laravel Version: 11.26.0
PHP Version: 8.3.12
Composer Version: 2.7.7
Environment: local
Debug Mode: ENABLED
URL: Test.test
Maintenance Mode: OFF
Timezone: UTC
Locale: en

Cache
Config: NOT CACHED
Events: NOT CACHED
Routes: NOT CACHED
Views: CACHED

Drivers
Broadcasting: log
Cache: file
Database: sqlite
Logs: stack / single
Mail: log
Queue: sync
Session: file

Statamic
Addons: 0
Sites: 1
Stache Watcher: Enabled (auto)
Static Caching: Disabled
Version: 5.29.0 Solo

Installation

Fresh statamic/statamic site via CLI

Additional details

No response

[duncanmcclean]

I think you might need to add the date field to the fields array in your search config in order for it to work:

'fields' => ['title', 'content', 'date'],

[AtmoFX]

If I do that, I can now search by date (e.g. /search?q=2024-10-02) but this has no impact on the sorting of results.
What I am trying to do is the sorting only, not the lookup of posts. I took the liberty to restore the title of this issue accordingly.

BTW, this is the reason why I tried using include_properties. The description (down this section) is not very explicit if you ask me but it looked to me that there was a chance the date was included in the search results and could therefore be used for sorting.

FYI, I noticed in the debugbar that {{ search:results index="testindex" sort='date:desc' }} does impact (at least) the query:

select * from search_testindex where status = 'published' order by date desc

Why I get the results in a different order is beyond me.