Retrieving the full list of refinements (applied and suggested)

By default, once end users make selections from a list of suggested refinements, Endeca Server narrows the result set. It does not return those refinements that have already been selected and returns remaining available, or suggested, refinements. However, in some cases, it may be useful to ask Endeca Server to return both suggested and already-applied refinements, (including both types of applied refinements: explicitly-selected and implicit).

Retrieving the full list of refinements — both applied and suggested — is useful only in specific implementations, and requires a special treatment in the user interface of the front-end application powered by the Endeca Server, to distinguish which of the refinements have been applied.

Note: When applied refinements are returned together with suggested refinements, a decision needs to be made in the user interface for how to handle them, to indicate to the end users which refinements have already been selected and which are still available for navigation. For example, one possibility is to display applied refinements along with suggested refinements, but make applied refinements un-selectable (with some indication that they are already selected implicitly).

The Conversation Web Service has controls that allow you to decide whether to retrieve the full list of refinements (or any combination of suggested, implicitly- and explicitly-selected refinements), globally for any attribute with a RefinementConfig in the containing NavigationMenuConfig, or for individually-specified attributes. Specifying these settings per attribute overrides the global settings. Further, these settings only apply when the RefinementConfig contains Expose=true.

For information, see: