On my Drupal 8 site, I am configuring a Search API search bar that uses a Search API Page that I've configured to include 3 entity types (Content, as well as 2 custom entities I have built).
The search is working as expected. The Search API Page for my defined index is set to show "Search results" style, which is just showing a hyperlink of the name or title of the entity, and all 3 entity types are returned in the search. The name/titles are all indexed as "Fulltext".
I want these links to be sortable alphabetically by the name or title of the entity (the text that appears in the hyperlink). I am attempting to use Search API Sorts to accomplish this. I have set up another field in the Index, an Aggregated field indexed as type "String", where I have checked it off to include just the name or title of each of the 3 entity types and no other fields. I chose "First" as the aggregation type since no search result will contain more than 1 of these fields. I then used Search API Sorts for this index to sort by this Aggregated Field by default, and then re-indexed my search.
It is just plain not working, the order of the returned results has not changed from before implementing the sort, they are not being returned alphabetically. I also tried using "Maximum" instead of "First" as the aggregation type, that did not make a difference either.
Am I missing a step here? I am not sure what to do to get this to work or what I could have done wrong.
edit: I'm aware that a search results page view can be created via Views which offers built-in sorting functionality, but when I attempt to create a View and choose my index under "Settings" with type set to "All" and tags left blank, I get this error:
The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.
Drupal\Component\Plugin\Exception\PluginNotFoundException: The "" entity type does not exist. in Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityTypeManager->getDefinition() (line 133 of core\lib\Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityTypeManager.php).
This is of course total gibberish to me... I am not sure where this is coming from. The verbose logs are as follows:
Notice: Undefined index: entity_type in Drupal\views\Plugin\views\field\Field->getFieldStorageDefinition() (line 325 of core\modules\views\src\Plugin\views\field\Field.php).
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\field\Field->getFieldStorageDefinition() (Line: 346)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\field\Field->defineOptions() (Line: 99)
Drupal\search_api\Plugin\views\field\SearchApiEntityField->defineOptions() (Line: 138)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\PluginBase->init(Object, Object, Array) (Line: 102)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\HandlerBase->init(Object, Object, Array) (Line: 115)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\field\FieldPluginBase->init(Object, Object, Array) (Line: 177)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\field\Field->init(Object, Object, Array) (Line: 57)
Drupal\search_api\Plugin\views\field\SearchApiEntityField->init(Object, Object, Array) (Line: 888)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\display\DisplayPluginBase->getHandlers('field') (Line: 2639)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\display\DisplayPluginBase->mergeHandler('field')
call_user_func(Array, 'field') (Line: 2604)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\display\DisplayPluginBase->mergeDefaults() (Line: 2395)
Drupal\views\ViewExecutable->mergeDefaults() (Line: 802)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\wizard\WizardPluginBase->addDisplays(Object, Array, Array, Object) (Line: 690)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\wizard\WizardPluginBase->instantiateView(Array, Object) (Line: 1259)
Drupal\views\Plugin\views\wizard\WizardPluginBase->validateView(Array, Object) (Line: 165)
Drupal\views_ui\ViewAddForm->validateForm(Array, Object)
call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 83)
Drupal\Core\Form\FormValidator->executeValidateHandlers(Array, Object) (Line: 270)
Drupal\Core\Form\FormValidator->doValidateForm(Array, Object, 'view_add_form') (Line: 119)
Drupal\Core\Form\FormValidator->validateForm('view_add_form', Array, Object) (Line: 571)
Drupal\Core\Form\FormBuilder->processForm('view_add_form', Array, Object) (Line: 314)
Drupal\Core\Form\FormBuilder->buildForm(Object, Object) (Line: 74)
Drupal\Core\Controller\FormController->getContentResult(Object, Object)
call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 123)
Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber->Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\{closure}() (Line: 574)
Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->executeInRenderContext(Object, Object) (Line: 124)
Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber->wrapControllerExecutionInRenderContext(Array, Array) (Line: 97)
Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber->Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\{closure}()
call_user_func_array(Object, Array) (Line: 139)
Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handleRaw(Object, 1) (Line: 62)
Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 57)
Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\Session->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 47)
Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\KernelPreHandle->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 47)
Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ReverseProxyMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 50)
Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\NegotiationMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 23)
Stack\StackedHttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 652)
Drupal\Core\DrupalKernel->handle(Object) (Line: 19)
I am trying to do it with these settings in the Views wizard: Link, since imgur seems to be down
