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Combining filters and sorting lets you narrow results to a relevant subset and then control the order in which they appear. For example, you can filter movies by genre and then sort them by rating.

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Configure filterable and sortable attributes

Before using filters and sorting together, you must add the relevant attributes to both filterableAttributes and sortableAttributes. An attribute used only in filters does not need to be sortable, and an attribute used only for sorting does not need to be filterable. Suppose you have a movies index with documents like this: 
{
  "id": 1,
  "title": "Mad Max: Fury Road",
  "genres": ["Action", "Adventure"],
  "rating": 8.1,
  "release_date": 1431648000
}
Configure the index so that genres is filterable and rating is sortable: 
curl \
  -X PATCH 'MEILISEARCH_URL/indexes/movies/settings' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "filterableAttributes": ["genres", "release_date"],
    "sortableAttributes": ["rating", "release_date"]
  }'
Wait for the settings task to complete before searching.

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Filter and sort in a single request

Once your settings are configured, pass both filter and sort in the same search request: 
curl \
  -X POST 'MEILISEARCH_URL/indexes/movies/search' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "q": "",
    "filter": "genres = Action",
    "sort": ["rating:desc"]
  }'
This request returns only action movies, sorted by rating from highest to lowest. The q parameter is set to an empty string, making this a placeholder search that returns all matching documents. The response looks like this: 
{
  "hits": [
    { "id": 1, "title": "Mad Max: Fury Road", "genres": ["Action", "Adventure"], "rating": 8.1 },
    { "id": 5, "title": "John Wick", "genres": ["Action", "Thriller"], "rating": 7.4 },
    { "id": 12, "title": "The Expendables", "genres": ["Action"], "rating": 6.5 }
  ],
  "query": "",
  "processingTimeMs": 1,
  "estimatedTotalHits": 45
}

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Combine multiple filters with sort

You can use AND, OR, and NOT operators to build complex filter expressions: 
curl \
  -X POST 'MEILISEARCH_URL/indexes/movies/search' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "q": "hero",
    "filter": "genres = Action AND rating > 7.0",
    "sort": ["release_date:desc"]
  }'
This request searches for “hero” in action movies with a rating above 7.0, sorted by most recent first.

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Combine geo filter with text search and sort

If your documents have _geo data, you can combine geo search filtering with text search and sorting. For example, find restaurants near a specific location and sort them by rating: 
curl \
  -X POST 'MEILISEARCH_URL/indexes/restaurants/search' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "q": "pizza",
    "filter": "_geoRadius(45.472735, 9.184019, 2000)",
    "sort": ["rating:desc"]
  }'
This returns pizza restaurants within 2 km of the specified coordinates, sorted by their rating. Make sure _geo is in filterableAttributes and rating is in sortableAttributes.

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Sort by multiple attributes

You can sort by more than one attribute. Meilisearch uses the second sort criterion as a tiebreaker when documents have the same value for the first: 
curl \
  -X POST 'MEILISEARCH_URL/indexes/movies/search' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary '{
    "q": "",
    "filter": "genres = Action",
    "sort": ["rating:desc", "release_date:desc"]
  }'
This sorts action movies by rating first, then by release date for movies with the same rating.

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Key points

  • Fields used in filter must be in filterableAttributes
  • Fields used in sort must be in sortableAttributes
  • A field can appear in both settings lists if you need to both filter and sort by it
  • Filters narrow the result set before sorting is applied
  • When combining with a text query, Meilisearch first applies the text relevancy ranking rules, then uses sort as an additional ranking rule

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Next steps

Filter search results

Learn the basics of configuring and using filters

Sort search results

Learn more about sorting configuration and options

Build faceted navigation

Add an interactive faceted sidebar to your search