fazeelT / CatalogSearch

Catalog Search

Introduction

We will design system that would allow searching through product catalog based on title/brand/description match with phonetic(similar sounding words) matching

Design

Search Strategies

• User will be able to search by specifying search filters like name, brand or no filter
• Search using no filters will show results by relevanceScore
• For search we will determine homophones and search for all keywords(user provided and homophones)

Database DynamoDB

• No SQL database is used to allow addition of attributes to products catalog or search terms table.
• If user specifies no search filter then we will use Product Search Attributes table
• On search we will only display productName and image(if available)

Table: Products Catalog

Attributes

• productId(primaryKey)
• name
• brandName
• category
• description
• imageUrl

Indexes

name_productId

• name(PartitionKey)
• product_id(sortKey)

brandName_productId

• brandName(PartitionKey)
• product_id(sortKey)

Table: Product search attributes

Attributes

• uid(primaryKey)
• searchTerm(not contain common words like the, a, an, and, or... LowerCased to ease search)
• relevanceScore
• searchTermFilter
• productId
• productName
• imageUrl

Indexes

searchTerm_relevance

• searchTerm(PartitionKey)
• relevanceScore(sortKey)

Future Enhancements

• If financially feasable move the catalog onto elastic search which automatically indexes all attributes
• Allow search using voice
• Allow search using image/camera/barcode

Assumptions

• The database will be located close to the user and data does not travel across long distance
• The keyword builder libraries are efficient and accurate in suggested keywords
• There are no special characters in the name/brand name/descriptions
• User input will be valid and will be trimmed
• Word is considered to be without any spaces
• Only works for english locale.