Incorrect Documentation: nested_path

[lukas-gitl]

It is not clear when one should use nested_path. We've had some issues with this. More details in next post.

[MacMcIrish]

The issue was actually not related to boolean search, but to nested search. Here is a short outline of the problem and our solution.

We would like to request the documentation (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/nested-sorting.html) to be updated to better reflect how and when someone should use the nested_path

It's mentioned that the field is mandatory in https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-request-sort.html , but very few examples show it's use.

Our test data: data.txt

Our test schema: schema.txt

Our test query: query1.txt

Resulted in : result1.txt

Note the negative integer under sort.

Changing the query to : query2.txt
(Note the newly added "nested_path" field)
Resulted in : result2.txt

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/es-search-aggs

[jimczi]

Thanks @MacMcIrish and @lukas-gitl and sorry for the (very) late reply. The negative value in the first example is the default value that we use when the field is missing in the document. It's happening because the field is nested but the nested context is missing so we search the value inside the root document. The nested value is correctly extracted in the second example where the nested context is correctly set. I opened #42809 to throw an exception if a nested field is used in a sort specification without the nested context and added a note in the documentation regarding this behavior.