March 2nd, 2009

Elastic times

nyt_elastic

Today was a good day, so I thought I would share its results immediately, instead of fine-tuning forever – who knows when I find the time anyways!

I built a little facet browser for the New York Times Article Search API – an impressively fast faceted search engine covering over two million articles. So, give it a spin!

Some caveats:

  • Don’t look for the page navigation – there is none. Pure laziness, will update it soon.
  • The initial counts are based on a search for “the” (which I figured would appear in all articles). Unfortunately, only the top 15 or so values per facet are returned, so you cannot click, e.g. the year 2008 in the beginning. Will fix.
  • The API has a request limit of 5000 queries per day. So if your requests don’t work – come back tomorrow morning :)
  • Unfortunately, the API seems to support only one value per facet. So, all facets are single-select.(fixed, see comments).

The code is based on my totally revamped elastic lists prototype. I used this project as a little sandbox experiment of how easy customization is possible, and especially how to make a switch from a fully client-based to a server–based filtering model.

12 Responses to 'Elastic times'

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  1. Paul
    March 3rd, 2009 at 12:13 am

    Hi Moritz,
    Not sure whether you saw my Tweet.
    I blogged about your elastic lists:
    http://salesenablement.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/content-landscape/

    Respect!
    Kind regards
    Paul

  2. Moritz Stefaner
    March 3rd, 2009 at 12:19 am

    Yep, saw it, but forgot to reply – thanks!

  3. Daniele Galiffa
    March 3rd, 2009 at 8:03 am

    As usual, a great job!

    Thans for sharing,
    d.

  4. Moritz Stefaner
    March 3rd, 2009 at 8:26 am

    Just learned that it is indeed possible to connect multiple values from one facet in a query:

    query=bush per_facet:[BUSH, GEORGE W] per_facet:[CLINTON, BILL]

  5. Moritz Stefaner
    March 5th, 2009 at 11:57 am

    Little update: Added browser history support and bookmarkable filter settings via SWFaddress.

    Example:
    Example query: Pope AND Fidel Castro

  6. Eloge du New-York Times (2) | Vedocci
    March 20th, 2009 at 7:36 pm

    […] Rechercher par facettes dans les articles du NYT : plus séduisant que NYT Explorer, Elastic List permet de rechercher dans 2,6 millions d’articles du périodique. Pour chaque recherche, l’outil conçu par Moritz Stefaner permet de filtrer les résultats par organisation, personne, localisation, année et description. Le mieux, c’est de tester ! (via Information Aesthetics, via Moritz Stefaner) […]

  7. Christian Blab
    March 26th, 2009 at 3:14 am

    Very cool projects, i am a bit speechless!

  8. Paul
    March 28th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    Super! Very nice.

  9. Moritz Stefaner
    March 28th, 2009 at 11:26 pm

    Thanks!

  10. PB
    May 27th, 2009 at 8:13 am

    Yep, saw it, but forgot to reply – thanks!

  11. David
    June 12th, 2009 at 2:40 am

    This is so elegant! I love the work that you are doing with elastic interfaces.

  12. Dennis van der Heijden
    October 29th, 2010 at 10:23 pm

    Thank for this, indeed super fast and very useful