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Using the annotated highlighter

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Using the `annotated` highlighter

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The annotated-text plugin includes a custom highlighter designed to mark up search hits in a way which is respectful of the original markup:

# Example documents
PUT my-index-000001/_doc/1
{
  "my_field": "The cat sat on the [mat](sku3578)"
}

GET my-index-000001/_search
{
  "query": {
    "query_string": {
        "query": "cats"
    }
  },
  "highlight": {
    "fields": {
      "my_field": {
        "type": "annotated", 
        "require_field_match": false
      }
    }
  }
}

The annotated highlighter type is designed for use with annotated_text fields

The annotated highlighter is based on the unified highlighter and supports the same settings but does not use the pre_tags or post_tags parameters. Rather than using html-like markup such as <em>cat</em> the annotated highlighter uses the same markdown-like syntax used for annotations and injects a key=value annotation where _hit_term is the key and the matched search term is the value e.g.

The [cat](_hit_term=cat) sat on the [mat](sku3578)

The annotated highlighter tries to be respectful of any existing markup in the original text:

If the search term matches exactly the location of an existing annotation then the _hit_term key is merged into the url-like syntax used in the (...) part of the existing annotation.
However, if the search term overlaps the span of an existing annotation it would break the markup formatting so the original annotation is removed in favour of a new annotation with just the search hit information in the results.
Any non-overlapping annotations in the original text are preserved in highlighter selections

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