Constructing Product Queries

The Datafiniti API lets you build out a wide variety of search queries so you can get the exact data you want. Queries are specified by the q parameter in the /data/products endpoint.

Querying a single field

The simplest query you can do is querying a single field. Here's an example:

q=categories:shoes

This tells the API to search the product database for any product that have the value shoes in its categories field.

You can do similar queries on any of the fields in the product schema. Here's an example that queries the name field:

q=name:printer

Querying multiple fields

You can run more complicated queries by combining fields with various boolean operators (e.g., AND OR). For example:

q=categories:laptops AND brand:Apple

This returns any products that are categorized as laptops and have Apple set as their brand.

You can use the OR operator to run broader queries. For example:

q=categories:laptops OR categories:desktops

That's not all though. We can group fields and operators with parentheses to do some really fancy stuff:

q=(categories:laptops OR categories:desktops) AND brand:Apple

Querying multiple values

If you want to query multiple values within the same field, there is a simple way to do this. For example:

q=categories:(laptops OR desktops OR tablets)

This returns any products matching any of the above categories. This is much simpler than:

q=categories:laptops OR categories:desktops OR categories:tablets

Wildcards

You can use * to query a field for any value, like this:

q=prices:*

This will return any products that have pricing information. This is helpful if we want to make sure any products we get back are guaranteed to have certain fields filed out.

Wildcards can do more though. You can also append * to the value we're searching on to broaden its potential matches. For example:

q=categories:comput*

This will return products with any of the following in their categories field: computer, computers, computing, computation, and so on.

Querying sub-fields

Several fields in our schema have sub-fields. For example, prices has sub-fields like amountMin, currency, and others. Everything you can do to query fields, you can also do to query sub-fields. For example:

q=prices.amountMin:3

will return all products that have a price of 3.

It's important to note here that querying on sub-fields will not only return sub-objects that match your query. The entire field will be returned.

For instance, if a product look likes this:

{
  "name": "example product",
  "prices:": [
    {
      "amountMin": 3
    },
    {
      "amounMin": 4
    }
  ]
}

then you'll see both amountMin values in your data, even if you do q=prices.amountMin:3.

Range queries

Any fields that are dates, integers, or doubles will let you search them based on a range.

q=dateAdded:[2017-01-01 TO 2017-02-01]

will return all products that have been added to the database between Jan 1, 2017 and Feb 2, 2017.

You can do unbounded range queries as well, like:

q=dateAdded:[2017-01-01 TO *]

This will return all products have been added since Jan 1, 2017 until the current date.

You can also use comparison operators like >, >=, <=, and <. These are helpful when you want to search for products that are cheaper or more expensive than certain limits. E.g.:

q=prices.amountMin:>10

returns all products that have a price greater than 10.