feat: sort by score (most relevant first) when searching

[danielsaul]

Types of changes

• Bug fix (a non-breaking change which fixes an issue)
• New feature (a non-breaking change which adds functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to change)

Description

I found when testing my search, that I was receiving strange results, with relevant ones mixed in with not so relevant ones. I spent a while digging, and found that the results are not being sorted at all.

When you perform a search, it is normally expected that the results will be sorted by the most relevant results first.
The existing search() method does not do this, and it is not possible to use sortBy() to sort by the underlying full text search score from LokiDB.

LokiDB offers a method to sortByScoring() which must be used to ensure the most relevant results are returned.

https://github.com/LokiJS-Forge/LokiDB/blob/master/packages/loki/src/result_set.ts#L377
https://github.com/LokiJS-Forge/LokiDB/blob/master/packages/full-text-search/spec/generic/full_text_search.spec.ts#L200

Therefore search() will now call sortByScoring() within it by default, sorting by the search score descending, to provide the most relevant results first.

Checklist:

• My change requires a change to the documentation.
• I have updated the documentation accordingly.
• I have added tests to cover my changes (if not applicable, please state why)

[atinux]

Thank you for this PR @danielsaul

I think that $content().search() should actually call .sortBySearchScoring() by default to send back relevant results instead.

[danielsaul]

Thank you for this PR @danielsaul

I think that $content().search() should actually call .sortBySearchScoring() by default to send back relevant results instead.

I did consider this and is exactly what I did initially, so happy to swap back to that.

The reason I didn't was so that we could expose the direction parameter, and allow sorting by the score in ascending order. It's not really possible to add direction as an additional parameter to search().

Having said that, not sure why you would ever want to sort by score ascending 🤷 so maybe not a concern.

I'll also double-check that sortByScoring won't have adverse affects on chaining a subsequent sortBy for example, but I can't imagine it would.

[atinux]

Having said that, not sure why you would ever want to sort by score ascending 🤷 so maybe not a concern.

Exactly, sometimes the best option is no option 😄 And anyway they can always .reverse() the result if they want to.

[danielsaul]

Having said that, not sure why you would ever want to sort by score ascending 🤷 so maybe not a concern.

Exactly, sometimes the best option is no option 😄 And anyway they can always .reverse() the result if they want to.

Cool! Simplified and updated PR description 👍
Don't think there's really any need for any documentation changes now.