When getting the search results it is possible to see some data of the article. It would be great to be able to sort the article based on it, especially on date, but, size and alphabetical would also be useful.
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
See Also:
T18237: Sort results by date
T64879: CirrusSearch: Allow users to search for pages modified "recently"
| Title | Reference | Author | Source Branch | Dest Branch | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bump cirrus-extra to 1.3.20-wmf7 | repos/search-platform/opensearch-plugins-deb!12 | dcausse | bump-extra-1.3.20-wmf7 | master |
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resolved | Feature | dcausse | T40403 Sortable search results | ||
| Resolved | EBernhardson | T195071 Add chronological sorting by-page-creation-timestamp for search results | |||
| Resolved | EBernhardson | T215198 Document search sort options available in API |
For what it's worth, the IFLA Statement of Principles 7.2 state:
When searching retrieves a large number of [results], results should be displayed in some logical order convenient to the [search] user [...]. The user should be able to choose among different criteria: date of publication, alphabetical order, relevance ranking, etc.
Hi @Ainali - were you able to solve this issue with a user script? If so, we might be able to put that information somewhere for others to use.
In the API this is now partially working!
@EBernhardson How complicated is it to make these URL parameters available for the default website search? (ideally for eventual inclusion in the Advanced Search interface)
Possible issue with this new functionality logged as T215487: search sorted by creation date missing some items
Fabulous! Thanks. I've mentioned it in the docs, and will mention it explicitly in that other task.
If what you're trying to do is something like "give me all the pages that contain x, and order them alphabetically" then you're better off using a query engine like Quarry. Then you have even more power than search can provide you. The site search is mostly intended for simple user searches, with some advanced syntax thrown in to serve use cases before easily accessible query engines like Quarry existed.
Copying comment from merged task:
I suspect the underlying technology is now sufficient to support alphabetical sorts (although we would have to evaluate it to be sure). The main sticking point in Cirrus today is going to be that the way we define keyword fields does not allow doc_values to be enabled. We would need to migrate all the existing fields with the keyword tokenizer to instead use the keyword type along with normalizers, which then allows us to enable doc_values on appropriate keyword fields. Once the index mapping is in place the new sort is only a few lines of configuration in Cirrus.
Change #1197705 had a related patch set uploaded (by DCausse; author: DCausse):
[search/extra@master] Add truncate_norm
Change #1198210 had a related patch set uploaded (by DCausse; author: DCausse):
[search/extra@master] Make the term_freq token filter normalizer compatible
Change #1198210 merged by jenkins-bot:
[search/extra@master] Make the term_freq token filter normalizer compatible
dcausse opened https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/repos/search-platform/opensearch-plugins-deb/-/merge_requests/12
Bump cirrus-extra to 1.3.20-wmf7
ebernhardson merged https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/repos/search-platform/opensearch-plugins-deb/-/merge_requests/12
Bump cirrus-extra to 1.3.20-wmf7
Change #1202084 had a related patch set uploaded (by DCausse; author: DCausse):
[mediawiki/extensions/CirrusSearch@master] Simplify natural sort settings
Change #1202084 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/CirrusSearch@master] Simplify natural sort settings
Change #1205130 had a related patch set uploaded (by DCausse; author: DCausse):
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] cirrus: index field to sort on title
Change #1198219 had a related patch set uploaded (by DCausse; author: DCausse):
[mediawiki/extensions/CirrusSearch@master] Make keyword fields actual opensearch keyword fields
Change #1198219 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/CirrusSearch@master] Make keyword fields actual opensearch keyword fields
Change #1205130 merged by jenkins-bot:
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] cirrus: index field to sort on title
Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-11-19T08:04:11Z] <dcausse@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1205130|cirrus: index field to sort on title (T40403)]]
Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-11-19T08:09:32Z] <dcausse@deploy2002> dcausse: Backport for [[gerrit:1205130|cirrus: index field to sort on title (T40403)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.
Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2025-11-19T08:17:52Z] <dcausse@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1205130|cirrus: index field to sort on title (T40403)]] (duration: 13m 42s)
Change #1223660 had a related patch set uploaded (by DCausse; author: DCausse):
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] cirrus: allow title natural sort
Change #1223660 merged by jenkins-bot:
[operations/mediawiki-config@master] cirrus: allow title natural sort
Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-01-06T14:22:20Z] <dcausse@deploy2002> Started scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1223660|cirrus: allow title natural sort (T40403)]]
Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-01-06T14:24:28Z] <dcausse@deploy2002> dcausse: Backport for [[gerrit:1223660|cirrus: allow title natural sort (T40403)]] synced to the testservers (see https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mwdebug). Changes can now be verified there.
Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2026-01-06T14:44:30Z] <dcausse@deploy2002> Finished scap sync-world: Backport for [[gerrit:1223660|cirrus: allow title natural sort (T40403)]] (duration: 22m 10s)
Support for the following sorting options:
have been added to the backend.
These are available via the action API but unfortunately not via the default Special:Search UI. The Advanced-Search extension enabled on most WMF wikis provide most of these sort options already (except for the last one which might be added via T403775).
I'm going to close this ticket, I would suggest opening new and more focused tickets if what is available now is not sufficient.