How to determine the operator used when reading the uiState for a refinement list

[callmekatootie]

In my uiState I see:

{
  refinementList: {
    foobar: ["x", "y"]
  }
}

irrespective of whether the operator is OR or AND. How do I thus determine the operator used from the uiState?

[dhayab]

Hi, the operator is not exposed from the uiState, and is only used to generate the search parameters for the relevant facet. You could store this value and use it for both widget declaration and your other requirements.

Do you have a specific use case for retrieving this value programmatically?

[callmekatootie]

I have a requirement where I need to build the search api parameters from the uiState. I, separately make a request using the api myself and pass the search parameters to it. And this is where I need to know if the values were AND or OR'ed...

Is there such a helper method that I can make use of? One that gives me the current search api parameters (with our without providing the uiState)...

[dhayab]

You can get all the search parameters sent to Algolia from the internal helper. If you need to perform a request in reaction to state change, you could set up a middleware like this:

const middleware = ({ instantSearchInstance }) => {
  const sendRequest = () => {
    const searchParameters = instantSearchInstance.mainIndex.getHelper()?.getQuery();
    // ...
  };

  return {
    subscribe: sendRequest,
    onStateChange: sendRequest,
  };
}

[callmekatootie]

Hmm... Was hoping more for a helper that can be invoked on user action v/s having to use a middleware each time the state changes (and potentially keeping in sync algolia's state with my app's state)... This looks promising though. Will implement and report back but let me know if there's something else that can be used only when user prompts

[Haroenv]

if you are doing this in a user action, you can use a custom widget which will get access to the InstantSearch instance.

[callmekatootie]

Happy to report back that the solution proposed by @dhayab is exactly what I needed. I would still need to keep track of it each time a request is made but it meets my needs.

There's one attribute missing though - the sortBy attribute. getQuery() does not return the sortBy value. Do you know what I can use to get that detail. I tried to look up the documentation (middleware and instance of instantsearch()) but there's not much detail there. (I could not even find getQuery there... I think I am not looking at the right documentation...)

[Haroenv]

getQuery is part of the helper api, so that is documented here: https://instantsearchjs.netlify.app/algoliasearch-helper-js/

sortBy isn't a parameter, that's why it's not present. It's only relevant for reading the response, it's not sent to algolia.