Ordering by complex types in Azure Search .NET SDK?

Question

So I have an index built with a parent/child structure like follows:

    {
            "Id": "13704",
            "StreetNumber": "29",
            "StreetName": "Fiction Road",
            "PostalCode": "DD1 G33"
            "CityName": "Fiction City",
            "Property": {
                "ID": 13592,
                "ParentPropertyID": 123
            }
    }

I want to order by Property/ParentPropertyID, which works fine on the Azure Portal using the following query string:

search=DD1 G33&searchmode=all&$orderby=Property/ParentPropertyID asc

This works as expected, and returns me a list of records matching this postcode ordered as specified. But, when I try to do this in C# with the Azure Search SDK, it returns results but doesn't seem to apply the order by. If I use one of the parent fields (e.g. StreetNumber) instead, it does work, so it seems limited to complex types. Code:

            SearchParameters parameters;
            DocumentSearchResult<TempAddress> results;

            parameters =
                new SearchParameters()
                {
                    SearchMode = SearchMode.All,
                    OrderBy = new[] { "Property/ParentPropertyID asc" }
                };

            results = _searchIndexClient.Documents.Search<TempAddress>("DD1 G33", parameters);

The results object returns the list of correct results, but the OrderBy hasn't been applied. It seems to find the field without any issues as it doesn't throw any errors. I can't really seem to find any examples of ordering by complex types either, or any examples involving complex types is using the same syntax as I've used above (i.e. ParentProp/ChildProp). If I change

OrderBy = new[] { "Property/ParentPropertyID asc" }

to:

OrderBy = new[] { "StreetNumber desc" }

The OrderBy works with no problems. I can't really see why this isn't working in code, but works on the portal?

The code looks fine. I tried at my end and Sorting works fine for the complex types. Can you pls check the SDK Version, ensure you re in the latest version. Also, can you try capture a trace (You can use Fiddler or any tool ). See how is the request & decoded response look like. See whether there is any difference in that. — Satya V
Thanks, I've realised what the problem was. I was using v10 of the SDK which targets API version 2019-05-06, but when querying the index manually, I was using 2020-06-30. Just found out there's a v11 of the SDK available under a separate Nuget package. — cameron2134

cameron2134 cameron2134 · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-16T08:03:55

Thanks to sathya_vijayakumar-MSFT I've figured out what the problem was, posting an answer in case anyone else has the same issue. I was using the Microsoft.Azure.Search Nuget package, which only goes up to version 10, but version 10 targets the 2019-05-06 Search API which doesn't seem to support ordering by complex types. If I manually make a query myself using the 2020-06-30 API, it works fine. The same manual query using the 2019-05-06 version doesn't work!

It turns out version 11 of the SDK is available targetting this API version, but it's under a different NuGet package: Azure.Search.Documents which is a fair breaking change from the original package (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/search-dotnet-sdk-migration-version-11).

Ordering by complex types in Azure Search .NET SDK?

1 Answers