Is there a way to specify order in a search_api query manually given a set of node ids?

Question

Using search_api I have an query with the following condition

$query->condition('nid', [1,5,3,7,10], 'IN')

I know I can sort by things like created date or title, but what if I knew the exact order I wanted everything returned in. So in the above example where I'm grabbing the nodes with ids [1,5,3,7,10] what if I want the results returned in that order too. So after executing in the array of results the nodes appear in 1,5,3,7,10 order.

I tried using orderBy but that does not appear to be a method of the search_api query class

Call to undefined method Drupal\search_api\Query\Query::orderBy()

UPDATE:

I tried passing a sort function into sort on the query like so

      $query->sort(function($a,$b) use ($allowed_nids){
        $pos_a = array_search($a->nid, $allowed_nids);
        $pos_b = array_search($b->nid, $allowed_nids);
        if(($pos_a == $pos_b)){
          return 0;
        }
        return ($pos_a < $pos_b) ? -1 : 1;
      });

But that gave me the error

TypeError: Illegal offset type in isset or empty in Drupal\search_api\Query\Query->sort() (line 465 of modules/contrib/search_api/src/Query/Query.php).

Which I assume means that it can only take strings for the sort function and not anonymous methods.

Answer 1

The error you are receiving is due to the first argument of sort() expecting the field name, not a function: https://git.drupalcode.org/project/search_api/-/blob/8.x-1.x/src/Query/Query.php#L462

As to your issue, I don't believe you can sort them in the query itself, but you can sort the results by the array:

$nids = [1,5,3,7,10];
$query->condition('nid', $nids, 'IN')
$results = $query->execute();

$sorted_results = array_merge(array_flip($nids), $results);