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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [1.7] ›Query DSL ›Queries

Simple Query String Query

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Simple Query String Query

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A query that uses the SimpleQueryParser to parse its context. Unlike the regular query_string query, the simple_query_string query will never throw an exception, and discards invalid parts of the query. Here is an example:

{
    "simple_query_string" : {
        "query": "\"fried eggs\" +(eggplant | potato) -frittata",
        "analyzer": "snowball",
        "fields": ["body^5","_all"],
        "default_operator": "and"
    }
}

The simple_query_string top level parameters include:

Parameter Description

query

The actual query to be parsed. See below for syntax.

fields

The fields to perform the parsed query against. Defaults to the index.query.default_field index settings, which in turn defaults to _all.

default_operator

The default operator used if no explicit operator is specified. For example, with a default operator of OR, the query capital of Hungary is translated to capital OR of OR Hungary, and with default operator of AND, the same query is translated to capital AND of AND Hungary. The default value is OR.

analyzer

The analyzer used to analyze each term of the query when creating composite queries.

flags

Flags specifying which features of the simple_query_string to enable. Defaults to ALL.

lowercase_expanded_terms

Whether terms of prefix and fuzzy queries should be automatically lower-cased or not (since they are not analyzed). Defaults to true.

analyze_wildcard

Whether terms of prefix queries should be automatically analyzed or not. If true a best effort will be made to analyze the prefix. However, some analyzers will be not able to provide a meaningful results based just on the prefix of a term. Defaults to false.

locale

Locale that should be used for string conversions. Defaults to ROOT.

lenient

If set to true will cause format based failures (like providing text to a numeric field) to be ignored.

minimum_should_match

The minimum number of clauses that must match for a document to be returned. See the minimum_should_match documentation for the full list of options.

Simple Query String Syntax

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The simple_query_string supports the following special characters:

  • + signifies AND operation
  • | signifies OR operation
  • - negates a single token
  • " wraps a number of tokens to signify a phrase for searching
  • * at the end of a term signifies a prefix query
  • ( and ) signify precedence
  • ~N after a word signifies edit distance (fuzziness)
  • ~N after a phrase signifies slop amount

In order to search for any of these special characters, they will need to be escaped with \.

Default Field

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When not explicitly specifying the field to search on in the query string syntax, the index.query.default_field will be used to derive which field to search on. It defaults to _all field.

So, if _all field is disabled, it might make sense to change it to set a different default field.

Multi Field

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The fields parameter can also include pattern based field names, allowing to automatically expand to the relevant fields (dynamically introduced fields included). For example:

{
    "simple_query_string" : {
        "fields" : ["content", "name.*^5"],
        "query" : "foo bar baz"
    }
}

Flags

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simple_query_string support multiple flags to specify which parsing features should be enabled. It is specified as a |-delimited string with the flags parameter:

{
    "simple_query_string" : {
        "query" : "foo | bar + baz*",
        "flags" : "OR|AND|PREFIX"
    }
}

The available flags are: ALL, NONE, AND, OR, NOT, PREFIX, PHRASE, PRECEDENCE, ESCAPE, WHITESPACE, FUZZY, NEAR, and SLOP.

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