Configure Human-Readable Date Facets

Overview

This page explains how to configure human-readable date facets in a faceted navigation tree.

When to Use

By default, when you use a date property as a facet in faceted navigation, the facet values display as milliseconds since the Unix epoch. To present dates in a readable format, you can configure the facet to use specific date resolutions such as year, month, or day.

Date Resolutions

To set a resolution for a date facet, append a dollar sign ($) and the resolution name to the property in the hippofacnav:facets property. For example:

myproject:date$year

Supported date resolutions:

year
month
week
dayofyear
dayofweek
day (day of month)
hour
minute
second

Note: The month resolution is zero-based: January is 0, December is 11. This matches the behavior of java.util.Calendar.

Example Configuration

To allow users to navigate news documents by publication date, configure the faceted tree as shown below:

/content/documents/myproject:
  /faceted-news:
    jcr:primaryType: hippofacnav:facetnavigation
    hippo:docbase: d2b1775c-fb97-4080-bd66-ede4ac874b5a
    hippofacnav:facets: [ myproject:date$year, myproject:date$month, myproject:date$day ]
    hippofacnav:facetnodenames: [ Year, Month, Day ]

This configuration produces a faceted tree structure similar to the following:

/content/documents/myproject:
  /faceted-news [30]:
    /Year [27]:
      /2015 [1]:
      /2016 [18]:
        /Year [18]:
        /Month [18]:
          /6 [3]:
          /8 [9]:
            /Year [9]:
            /Month [9]:
            /Day [9]:
              /12 [3]:
              /17 [3]:
              /23 [3]:
              /hippo:resultset [9]:
            /hippo:resultset [9]:
          /9 [6]:
          /hippo:resultset [18]:
        /Day [18]:
        /hippo:resultset [18]:
      /2017 [6]:
      /hippo:resultset [27]:
    /Month [27]:
    /Day [27]:
    /hippo:resultset [30]:

With this faceted tree, you can implement a delivery tier that renders navigation options for users to filter results by year, month, and day. You can also use this structure to build calendar-based navigation, as demonstrated in the Events section of the GoGreen demo.

Note: To control the order in which facets become available (for example, only display months after a year is selected), see Configure a Guided Drill Path in a Faceted Tree.