Script Fields

Allows to return a script evaluation (based on different fields) for each hit, for example:

{
    "query" : {
        ...
    },
    "script_fields" : {
        "test1" : {
            "script" : "doc['my_field_name'].value * 2"
        },
        "test2" : {
            "script" : "doc['my_field_name'].value * factor",
            "params" : {
                "factor"  : 2.0
            }
        }
    }
}

Script fields can work on fields that are not stored (my_field_name in the above case), and allow to return custom values to be returned (the evaluated value of the script).

Script fields can also access the actual _source document indexed and extract specific elements to be returned from it (can be an "object" type). Here is an example:

    {
        "query" : {
            ...
        },
        "script_fields" : {
            "test1" : {
                "script" : "_source.obj1.obj2"
            }
        }
    }

Note the _source keyword here to navigate the json-like model.

It’s important to understand the difference between doc['my_field'].value and _source.my_field. The first, using the doc keyword, will cause the terms for that field to be loaded to memory (cached), which will result in faster execution, but more memory consumption. Also, the doc[...] notation only allows for simple valued fields (can’t return a json object from it) and make sense only on non-analyzed or single term based fields.

The _source on the other hand causes the source to be loaded, parsed, and then only the relevant part of the json is returned.