Feature request: sort posts search by score (single-subreddit/author scope)

[kanihal]

Would it be possible to add sort_type=score to /api/posts/search.
This can be supported only when a subreddit or author filter
is present, and NOT supported for global/unfiltered queries.

pullpush search already does this - https://search.pullpush.io/ (although it has data only till May, 2025)

---

I assume it would need (subreddit, score) / (author, score) indexes
to avoid the full-sort timeout case, so scoping it should keep the cost down.

Workaround I'm using currently: I fetch with a filter + fields=...,score and sort client-side.

[ArthurHeitmann]

Hi, I've thought about it too, but there are some challenges. It's simple to just create a (subreddit, score) index, but it might fail when a selected time range is chosen, that is far down in the index. For example If you want the most upvoted comments from r/AskReddit in 2018, there will be a lot a lot of comments in the index before 2018 is reached. Or when sorting post in ascending score order, there will be millions of posts with 0 or 1 upvotes.

Another approach might be to do an index over (subreddit, month, score). But I haven't tested that yet.

Currently my focus is on keeping the API running reliably. And introducing another potentially unpredictable parameter variation into the mix, is unfortunately at conflict with that.

[kanihal]

That all makes sense, thanks for the detailed explanation.

Index on (subreddit, month, score) approach useful. My guess is that k-way merging the monthly score-sorted buckets would keep the work roughly bounded to the results actually being returned.

One possible compromise could be to constrain the feature a bit: only support score descending, require a subreddit or author filter, and cap the result window. That avoids the worst cases like ascending through millions of low-score posts entirely.

No rush either way, I appreciate you keeping the API stable.