Histogram Aggregation

The response above show that no documents has a price that falls within the range of [100 - 150). By default the response will fill gaps in the histogram with empty buckets. It is possible change that and request buckets with a higher minimum count thanks to the min_doc_count setting:

POST /sales/_search?size=0
{
    "aggs" : {
        "prices" : {
            "histogram" : {
                "field" : "price",
                "interval" : 50,
                "min_doc_count" : 1
            }
        }
    }
}

Response:

{
    ...
    "aggregations": {
        "prices" : {
            "buckets": [
                {
                    "key": 0.0,
                    "doc_count": 1
                },
                {
                    "key": 50.0,
                    "doc_count": 1
                },
                {
                    "key": 150.0,
                    "doc_count": 2
                },
                {
                    "key": 200.0,
                    "doc_count": 3
                }
            ]
        }
    }
}

By default the histogram returns all the buckets within the range of the data itself, that is, the documents with the smallest values (on which with histogram) will determine the min bucket (the bucket with the smallest key) and the documents with the highest values will determine the max bucket (the bucket with the highest key). Often, when requesting empty buckets, this causes a confusion, specifically, when the data is also filtered.

To understand why, let’s look at an example:

Lets say the you’re filtering your request to get all docs with values between 0 and 500, in addition you’d like to slice the data per price using a histogram with an interval of 50. You also specify "min_doc_count" : 0 as you’d like to get all buckets even the empty ones. If it happens that all products (documents) have prices higher than 100, the first bucket you’ll get will be the one with 100 as its key. This is confusing, as many times, you’d also like to get those buckets between 0 - 100.

With extended_bounds setting, you now can "force" the histogram aggregation to start building buckets on a specific min value and also keep on building buckets up to a max value (even if there are no documents anymore). Using extended_bounds only makes sense when min_doc_count is 0 (the empty buckets will never be returned if min_doc_count is greater than 0).

Note that (as the name suggest) extended_bounds is not filtering buckets. Meaning, if the extended_bounds.min is higher than the values extracted from the documents, the documents will still dictate what the first bucket will be (and the same goes for the extended_bounds.max and the last bucket). For filtering buckets, one should nest the histogram aggregation under a range filter aggregation with the appropriate from/to settings.

Example:

POST /sales/_search?size=0
{
    "query" : {
        "constant_score" : { "filter": { "range" : { "price" : { "to" : "500" } } } }
    },
    "aggs" : {
        "prices" : {
            "histogram" : {
                "field" : "price",
                "interval" : 50,
                "extended_bounds" : {
                    "min" : 0,
                    "max" : 500
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

By default the returned buckets are sorted by their key ascending, though the order behaviour can be controlled using the order setting.

Ordering the buckets by their key - descending:

POST /sales/_search?size=0
{
    "aggs" : {
        "prices" : {
            "histogram" : {
                "field" : "price",
                "interval" : 50,
                "order" : { "_key" : "desc" }
            }
        }
    }
}

Ordering the buckets by their doc_count - ascending:

POST /sales/_search?size=0
{
    "aggs" : {
        "prices" : {
            "histogram" : {
                "field" : "price",
                "interval" : 50,
                "order" : { "_count" : "asc" }
            }
        }
    }
}

If the histogram aggregation has a direct metrics sub-aggregation, the latter can determine the order of the buckets:

POST /sales/_search?size=0
{
    "aggs" : {
        "prices" : {
            "histogram" : {
                "field" : "price",
                "interval" : 50,
                "order" : { "price_stats.min" : "asc" } 
            },
            "aggs" : {
                "price_stats" : { "stats" : {"field" : "price"} }
            }
        }
    }
}

It is also possible to order the buckets based on a "deeper" aggregation in the hierarchy. This is supported as long as the aggregations path are of a single-bucket type, where the last aggregation in the path may either by a single-bucket one or a metrics one. If it’s a single-bucket type, the order will be defined by the number of docs in the bucket (i.e. doc_count), in case it’s a metrics one, the same rules as above apply (where the path must indicate the metric name to sort by in case of a multi-value metrics aggregation, and in case of a single-value metrics aggregation the sort will be applied on that value).

The path must be defined in the following form:

AGG_SEPARATOR       =  '>' ;
METRIC_SEPARATOR    =  '.' ;
AGG_NAME            =  <the name of the aggregation> ;
METRIC              =  <the name of the metric (in case of multi-value metrics aggregation)> ;
PATH                =  <AGG_NAME> [ <AGG_SEPARATOR>, <AGG_NAME> ]* [ <METRIC_SEPARATOR>, <METRIC> ] ;

POST /sales/_search?size=0
{
    "aggs" : {
        "prices" : {
            "histogram" : {
                "field" : "price",
                "interval" : 50,
                "order" : { "promoted_products>rating_stats.avg" : "desc" } 
            },
            "aggs" : {
                "promoted_products" : {
                    "filter" : { "term" : { "promoted" : true }},
                    "aggs" : {
                        "rating_stats" : { "stats" : { "field" : "rating" }}
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

The above will sort the buckets based on the avg rating among the promoted products

By default the bucket keys start with 0 and then continue in even spaced steps of interval, e.g. if the interval is 10, the first three buckets (assuming there is data inside them) will be [0 - 9], [10-19], [20-29]. The bucket boundaries can be shifted by using the offset option.

This can be best illustrated with an example. If there are 10 documents with values ranging from 5 to 14, using interval 10 will result in two buckets with 5 documents each. If an additional offset 5 is used, there will be only one single bucket [5-14] containing all the 10 documents.

By default, the buckets are returned as an ordered array. It is also possible to request the response as a hash instead keyed by the buckets keys:

POST /sales/_search?size=0
{
    "aggs" : {
        "prices" : {
            "histogram" : {
                "field" : "price",
                "interval" : 50,
                "keyed" : true
            }
        }
    }
}

Response:

{
    ...
    "aggregations": {
        "prices": {
            "buckets": {
                "0.0": {
                    "key": 0.0,
                    "doc_count": 1
                },
                "50.0": {
                    "key": 50.0,
                    "doc_count": 1
                },
                "100.0": {
                    "key": 100.0,
                    "doc_count": 0
                },
                "150.0": {
                    "key": 150.0,
                    "doc_count": 2
                },
                "200.0": {
                    "key": 200.0,
                    "doc_count": 3
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

The missing parameter defines how documents that are missing a value should be treated. By default they will be ignored but it is also possible to treat them as if they had a value.

POST /sales/_search?size=0
{
    "aggs" : {
        "quantity" : {
             "histogram" : {
                 "field" : "quantity",
                 "interval": 10,
                 "missing": 0 
             }
         }
    }
}