Humane Discovery 1.1.9

Humane Discovery product stack aims to solve entire discovery problem space for content (such as exams, jobs), news & media, e-commerce, digital goods products etc. More specifically product approaches the discovery problem in following broad parts --

• Search based discovery, such as autocomplete, suggested queries, search results, instance searches.
• Personalised discovery such as recommended products (or posts).
• Curated discovery such as curated collections or products.
• Domain specific discovery algorithms such as news one may have missed since last visit.

We call the lowest unit that can be searched, personalised or curated a 'Product'. These can be any of the following --

• Banners
• Tabs
• Categories
• E-commerce Products
• Digital Products such as e-books, PDFs
• Posts such as News, Articles
• Blog or Articles
• Discounts
• Offers
• Delivery Slots
• Collections

Search based discovery

• APIs for
  • Autocomplete,
  • Suggested Queries,
  • Search Results,
  • Instance Search (Search As You Type).
• Excellent support for fuzzy queries, and vernacular queries.
• Easy synonyms management (add, update, & remove) without worrying about re-indexing as product takes care of re-indexing or query-expansion itself.
• Match relevancy algorithm that considers
  • Some fields are more important than others.
  • Matches in single field are better than matches in two separate fields.
  • Phrase matches are better than single field matches.
  • Single field matches in lower weight field are better than matches in two different higher weight field.
• Product's weight auto-computation from disparate type of signals - views, downloads, add to cart, cart abandonment, purchases, time spent, or any custom events.
• Multiple ways to compute weight --
  • Weighted signals based weight.
  • Holt Winter's based trend forecast weight.

Personalised discovery [Not Yet Open Sourced]

• Personalises entire experience based on user profile, past behavior, and geo-location, such as --
  • Banners
  • Tabs
  • Categories
  • E-commerce Products
  • Digital Products such as e-books, PDFs
  • Posts such as News, Articles
  • Blogs or Articles
  • Discounts
  • Offers
  • Delivery Slots
  • Collections
• Auto learns user preferences based on implicit behaviors.
• Auto A/B tests new products to learn user preferences.
• Careful mix of recommendations, curated, A/B test products.
• Collaborative filtering based discovery algorithms, such as people who bought (or any other signal) X also bought (or any other signal)

Curated discovery [Not Yet Open Sourced]

• Hand or community curated products or their collections.

Domain specific discovery algorithms [Not Yet Open Sourced]

• Many domain specific discovery algorithms, such as --
  • News one may have missed since last visit.
  • Popular Products
  • Trending Products
• Custom algorithms can be composed in functional style.

Data Pipeline

• A very powerful data pipeline that can import data from variety of sources --
  • CSV Files
  • TSV Files
  • JSON Files
  • Array of JSON
• Transform or multiplex data through JS functions.
• Extend data with lookups & mapper
• Output data to Indexer, as of now (more to come).

How to Install

Follow prerequisites and then install it as global npm module: npm install -g humane-discovery

Prerequisites

• node - v4.0.0+
• npm - v2.0.0+
• You are familiar with npm and know whether or not you need to use sudo when installing packages globally.
• git - v2.7.0+
• elasticsearch -v2.1+
• analysis-phonetic plugin for elasticsearch - <es>/bin/plugin install analysis-phonetic

How to Run

Humane-discovery has two commands - one for cli, another for server

Running Server

Server runs the searcher and indexer API services and cockpit UI.

humane-server --discoveryPlugin <plugin module> --port [PORT] --transliterator [transliterator module]

Below are details on various options -

discoveryPlugin  - Path to single or list of comma separated discovery plugins.
                   Can be name of globally installed module or full path to module directory.
                   Defaults to:
                       1) Current directory - must be a valid node module
                       2) HUMANE_PLUGIN_DISCOVERY environment variable
                       
transliterator   - Path to transliterator plugin (optional).
                   Can be name of globally installed plugin module or full path to plugin directory.
                   Defaults to: HUMANE_PLUGIN_TRANSLITERATOR environment variable
                   
port             - Server Port. Defaults to: 3000                   

Running Cli

CLI provides various utility commands for managing indexes - such as adding (or removing) index, add (or update, delete, upsert) data, import data into index through data pipeline.

humane-cli --discoveryPlugin <plugin module>

Below are details on various options.

discoveryPlugin  - Path to single discovery plugin.
                   Can be name of globally installed module or full path to module directory.
                   Defaults to:
                       1) Current directory - must be a valid node module
                       2) HUMANE_PLUGIN_DISCOVERY environment variable

CLI is a meta-cli, that is CLI generates another CLI based on provided discovery plugin. This way commands are specific to the configured indexes, types, data pipeline. Below is such a sample CLI.

How to Create Discovery Plugin

1. Create a new npm module for the plugin.
2. Add dependency on humane-indexer: npm install --save humane-indexer
3. Create IndicesConfig.js, SearchConfig.js, and CockpitConfig.js - refer below for details

• Indexer Configuration
• Search Configuration
• Cockpit Configuration

4. You can optionally define DataPipelineConfig.js - refer Indexer Configuration for details.
5. Create a index.js file.
6. Export following from index.js

• name of the instance (say exams) as instanceName
• IndicesConfig.js as indicesConfig
• SearchConfig.js as searchConfig
• CockpitConfig.js as cockpitConfig
• DataPipelineConfig.js as dataPipelineConfig

Sample index.js -

exports.instanceName = 'exams';
exports.dataPipelineConfig = require('./DataPipelineConfig.js');
exports.indicesConfig = require('./IndicesConfig.js');
exports.searchConfig = require('./SearchConfig.js');
exports.cockpitConfig = require('./CockpitConfig.js');

7. In package.json specify this as 'main':

"main": "./lib/index.js"

8. If you use ES6, main should refer to babel compiled code for es5. Use following babel presets -

  "babel": {
      "plugins": [
          "transform-runtime"
      ],
      "presets": [
          "es2015"
      ]
  }

API Documentation

• Indexer APIs
• Search APIs