Better querying for ElasticSearch

I wrote about how to write filter queries using pyes. Unfortunately after using ElasticSearch in the Add-ons Builder, I realized that our code would become unwieldy and hard to read if we kept using straight up pyes.

I prefer to write APIs so that are natural and conform to how I think, not one that simply mirrors another system.

So rather than this:

    filters = [TermFilter("platform", "all"),
               TermFilter("product", "firefox"),
               TermFilter("version", "4.0")]
    filter = ANDFilter(filters)
    q = FilteredQuery(MatchAllQuery(), filter).search()
    q.facet.add_term_facet('type')
    results = es.search(q)

I made something simpler:

    from elasticutils import S
    results = (S(platform='all', product='firefox', version='4.0')
               .facet('type').get_results)

Here were the design thoughts:

• I wanted something easy to remember, S for search.
• I wanted smart defaults, by default S() matches all documents, unless you give it a query term.
• I didn’t want to write python that looked like Java, or JSON or even a dict.
• I wanted to write something that felt like the Django-ORM
• Ultimately I want code that I enjoy writing.

So here it is, I expect it to power Firefox Add-ons, the Add-ons Builder and Firefox Input shortly.

This is all part of ElasticUtils. Let me know if you are using it, and pull requests are welcome!