Python elasticsearch-dsl django pagination

Question

How can i use django pagination on elasticsearch dsl. My code:

query = MultiMatch(query=q, fields=['title', 'body'], fuzziness='AUTO')

s = Search(using=elastic_client, index='post').query(query).sort('-created_at')
response = s.execute()

// this always returns page count 1
paginator = Paginator(response, 100)
page = request.GET.get('page')
try:
    posts = paginator.page(page)
except PageNotAnInteger:
    posts = paginator.page(1)
except EmptyPage:
    posts = paginator.page(paginator.num_pages)

Any solution for this?

Answer 1

A very simple solution is to use MultipleObjectMixin and extract your Elastic results in get_queryset() by overriding it. In this case Django will take care of the pagination itself if you add the paginate_by attribute.

It should look like that:

class MyView(MultipleObjectMixin, ListView):
    paginate_by = 10

    def get_queryset(self):
        object_list = []
        """ Query Elastic here and return the response data in `object_list`.
            If you wish to add filters when querying Elastic,
            you can use self.request.GET params here. """
        return object_list

Note: The code above is broad and different from my own case so I can not guarantee it works. I used similar solution by inheriting other Mixins, overriding get_queryset() and taking advantage of Django's built in pagination - it worked great for me. As it was an easy fix I decided to post it here with a similar example.

Answer 2

I found this paginator on this link:

from django.core.paginator import Paginator, Page

class DSEPaginator(Paginator):
    """
    Override Django's built-in Paginator class to take in a count/total number of items;
    Elasticsearch provides the total as a part of the query results, so we can minimize hits.
    """
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(DSEPaginator, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self._count = self.object_list.hits.total

    def page(self, number):
        # this is overridden to prevent any slicing of the object_list - Elasticsearch has
        # returned the sliced data already.
        number = self.validate_number(number)
        return Page(self.object_list, number, self)

and then in view i use:

    q = request.GET.get('q', None)
    page = int(request.GET.get('page', '1'))
    start = (page-1) * 10
    end = start + 10

    query = MultiMatch(query=q, fields=['title', 'body'], fuzziness='AUTO')
    s = Search(using=elastic_client, index='post').query(query)[start:end]
    response = s.execute()

    paginator = DSEPaginator(response, settings.POSTS_PER_PAGE)
    try:
        posts = paginator.page(page)
    except PageNotAnInteger:
        posts = paginator.page(1)
    except EmptyPage:
        posts = paginator.page(paginator.num_pages)

this way it works perfectly..

Answer 3

Following the advice from Danielle Madeley, I also created a proxy to search results which works well with the latest version of django-elasticsearch-dsl==0.4.4.

from django.utils.functional import LazyObject

class SearchResults(LazyObject):
    def __init__(self, search_object):
        self._wrapped = search_object

    def __len__(self):
        return self._wrapped.count()

    def __getitem__(self, index):
        search_results = self._wrapped[index]
        if isinstance(index, slice):
            search_results = list(search_results)
        return search_results

Then you can use it in your search view like this:

paginate_by = 20
search = MyModelDocument.search()
# ... do some filtering ...
search_results = SearchResults(search)

paginator = Paginator(search_results, paginate_by)
page_number = request.GET.get("page")
try:
    page = paginator.page(page_number)
except PageNotAnInteger:
    # If page parameter is not an integer, show first page.
    page = paginator.page(1)
except EmptyPage:
    # If page parameter is out of range, show last existing page.
    page = paginator.page(paginator.num_pages)

Django's LazyObject proxies all attributes and methods from the object assigned to the _wrapped attribute. I am overriding a couple of methods that are required by Django's paginator, but don't work out of the box with the Search() instances.