Model algolia crumbs to allow hierarchical filtering

[machow]

Currently, quarto includes crumbs in the algolia search.json as an array. However, afaik algolia cannot filter by crumb level (e.g. filter on first crumb).

From this algolia issue, it looks like algolia expects an object to represent hierarachical structure:

• current: crumbs: ["a", "b", "c"]
• suggested: crumbs: {"lvl0": "a", "lvl1": "b", "lvl2": "c"}}

I'm happy to explore more what the hierarchical structure could give users. But I suspect it might make it easier to build out facets / filters based on crumbs. I wanted to raise early, though -- to get any quick impressions on this algolia approach. (I personally don't love things like "lvl0", but am loving algolia facetting!)

See the algolia docs on filtering

[machow]

Here's an example, where I modified quarto-web's search.json to use the hierarchical approach. Before, algolia listed all crumbs as a single facet to filter on (as if crumbs is an array of tags). With the hierarchy, it lists them as separate filters:

Search UI preview

And here is a search UI preview with a hierarchical filter. Suppose I search for "sidebar" and don't want dashboard results -- it's quick to filter to Guide -> Website! The demo isn't great, but it's pretty easy to use the algolia API for this kind of thing: