Match behaviour of "return-fields" parameter with missing/noresult field to the one of Amazon CloudSearch

[piroor]

There is no document about such cases.

For missing fields, should we return error responses? Or, simply ignore them? For "noresult" fields, how should we treat them?

[darashi]

All cases returned 200 OK but the behaviors are slightly different in details.

1) If we do not have return-field specified, the data key in hit array is not appeared:

{"rank":"-text_relevance","match-expr":"(label title:'movie')","hits":{"found":31,"start":0,"hit":[{"id":"tt0795461"},{"id":"tt0823188"},{"id":"tt0092106"},{"id":"tt0462538"},{"id":"tt0306047"},{"id":"tt1679332"},{"id":"tt0120389"},{"id":"tt0345950"},{"id":"tt0389790"},{"id":"tt1571739"}]},"info":{"rid":"8b46e820abdf9c2b6422cf05f897b7f6618a83ca20c7e5ca20ada6f5d352a8dafa433e0a5566b9cc","time-ms":3,"cpu-time-ms":4}}

2) If we specified the non-exist field only, for return-fields, empty "data": {} is included in the elements of the hit array:

earch.amazonaws.com/2011-02-01/search?bq=title:'movie'&return-fields=not-exist"
{"rank":"-text_relevance","match-expr":"(label title:'movie')","hits":{"found":31,"start":0,"hit":[{"id":"tt0795461","data":{}},{"id":"tt0823188","data":{}},{"id":"tt0092106","data":{}},{"id":"tt0462538","data":{}},{"id":"tt0306047","data":{}},{"id":"tt1679332","data":{}},{"id":"tt0120389","data":{}},{"id":"tt0345950","data":{}},{"id":"tt0389790","data":{}},{"id":"tt1571739","data":{}}]},"info":{"rid":"8b46e820abdf9c2b6422cf05f897b7f64782dd96071f4452e88d463e57c3d7082d3c52ec7337b978","time-ms":3,"cpu-time-ms":4}}

3) If we specified both non-existent fields and existent fields, non-existent fields are simply ignored:

{"rank":"-text_relevance","match-expr":"(label title:'movie')","hits":{"found":31,"start":0,"hit":[{"id":"tt0795461","data":{"title":["Scary Movie 5"]}},{"id":"tt0823188","data":{"title":["The Sex Movie"]}},{"id":"tt0092106","data":{"title":["The Transformers: The Movie"]}},{"id":"tt0462538","data":{"title":["The Simpsons Movie"]}},{"id":"tt0306047","data":{"title":["Scary Movie 3"]}},{"id":"tt1679332","data":{"title":["Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie"]}},{"id":"tt0120389","data":{"title":["Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie"]}},{"id":"tt0345950","data":{"title":["The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie"]}},{"id":"tt0389790","data":{"title":["Bee Movie"]}},{"id":"tt1571739","data":{"title":["This Movie Is Broken"]}}]},"info":{"rid":"8b46e820abdf9c2b6422cf05f897b7f602f78cc3d6ac673dff0003d47d50f29e948b31dcf5544547","time-ms":3,"cpu-time-ms":0}}

4) If the field does exist and is noresult (in this example genre faceted field is used), the empty value for the field is returned:

{"rank":"-text_relevance","match-expr":"(label title:'movie')","hits":{"found":31,"start":0,"hit":[{"id":"tt0795461","data":{"genre":[]}},{"id":"tt0823188","data":{"genre":[]}},{"id":"tt0092106","data":{"genre":[]}},{"id":"tt0462538","data":{"genre":[]}},{"id":"tt0306047","data":{"genre":[]}},{"id":"tt1679332","data":{"genre":[]}},{"id":"tt0120389","data":{"genre":[]}},{"id":"tt0345950","data":{"genre":[]}},{"id":"tt0389790","data":{"genre":[]}},{"id":"tt1571739","data":{"genre":[]}}]},"info":{"rid":"8b46e820abdf9c2b6422cf05f897b7f66bc1f9dad73bf90112ef64431e6e48dfbf6f08324e920be5","time-ms":3,"cpu-time-ms":0}}

[piroor]

Done. Thanks!