# How do I sort buckets by Term Aggregation's doc\_count?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-do-i-sort-buckets-by-term-aggregations-doc-count/145453>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [August 21, 2018, 7:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-do-i-sort-buckets-by-term-aggregations-doc-count/145453 "2018-08-21T19:35:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kriyate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@kriyate](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kriyate)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 7:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-do-i-sort-buckets-by-term-aggregations-doc-count/145453/1 "2018-08-21T19:35:20Z")

</div>

Hi everyone:

I have an index, `invoices`, that I need to aggregate into yearly buckets, then sort.

I have succeeded in using Bucket Sort to sort my buckets by simple sum values (`revenue` and `tax`). However, I am struggling to sort by more deeply nested doc\_count values (`status`).

I want to order my buckets not only by `revenue`, but also by the number of docs with a `status` field equal to 1 for example (that represents an 'approved' invoice).

**Doc Shape**

The documents in my index looks like this:

```
"_source": {
  "created_at": "2018-07-07T03:11:34.327Z",
  "status": 3,
  "revenue": 68.474,
  "tax": 6.85,
}

```

**The Query**

I request my aggregations like this:

```
const params = {
  index: 'invoices',
  size: 0,
  body: {
    aggs: {
      sales: {
        date_histogram: {
          field: 'created_at',
          interval: 'year',
        },
        aggs: {
          total_revenue: { sum: { field: 'revenue' } },
          total_tax: { sum: { field: 'tax' } },
          statuses: {
            terms: {
              field: 'status',
            },
          },
          approved_invoices: {
            filter: {
              term: {
                status: 1,
              },
            },
          },
          sales_bucket_sort: {
            bucket_sort: {
              sort: [{ total_revenue: { order: 'desc' } }],
            },
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

```

**The Response**

The response (truncated) looks like this:

```
"aggregations": {
    "sales": {
        "buckets": [
            {
                "key_as_string": "2016-01-01T00:00:00.000Z",
                "key": 1451606400000,
                "doc_count": 254,
                "total_tax": {
                    "value": 735.53
                },
                "approved_invoices": {
                    "doc_count": 58
                },
                "statuses": {
                    "sum_other_doc_count": 0,
                    "buckets": [
                        {
                            "key": 2,
                            "doc_count": 59
                        },
                        {
                            "key": 1,
                            "doc_count": 58
                        },
                        {
                            "key": 5,
                            "doc_count": 57
                        },
                        {
                            "key": 3,
                            "doc_count": 40
                        },
                        {
                            "key": 4,
                            "doc_count": 40
                        }
                    ]
                },
                "total_revenue": {
                    "value": 7355.376005351543
                }
            },
          ]
        }
      }

```

**What I Tried**

I want to sort by approved\_invoices.doc\_count. I tried to modify my query like this:

```
          sales_bucket_sort: {
            bucket_sort: {
              sort: [{ 'approved_invoices.doc_count': { order: 'desc' } }],
            },
          },

```

But got this error:

`Cannot find an aggregation named [doc_count] in [approved]"`

If I try this I get this error:

```
          sales_bucket_sort: {
            bucket_sort: {
              sort: [{ 'approved_invoices': { order: 'desc' } }],
            },
          },

```

`buckets_path must reference either a number value or a single value numeric metric aggregation, got: org.elasticsearch.search.aggregations.bucket.filter.InternalFilter`

I also tried to sort by the equivalent value in my terms aggregation but it did nothing:

```
          sales_bucket_sort: {
            bucket_sort: {
                sort: [{ 'statuses.buckets[0]._doc_count': { order: 'asc' } }],
            },
          },

```

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kriyate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@kriyate](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kriyate)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2018, 8:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-do-i-sort-buckets-by-term-aggregations-doc-count/145453/2 "2018-08-21T20:21:45Z")

</div>

Never mind, I think I figured it out. I learned that I am able to bucket-sort that value like this:

```
          sales_bucket_sort: {
            bucket_sort: {
                sort: [{ 'approved_invoices>_count': { order: 'asc' } }],
            },
          },
```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 8:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-do-i-sort-buckets-by-term-aggregations-doc-count/145453/3 "2018-09-18T20:21:47Z")

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