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WARNING: Version 5.4 of Elasticsearch has passed its EOL date.

This documentation is no longer being maintained and may be removed. If you are running this version, we strongly advise you to upgrade. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Reference [5.4] ›Search APIs ›Request Body Search

Post filter

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Post filter

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The post_filter is applied to the search hits at the very end of a search request, after aggregations have already been calculated. Its purpose is best explained by example:

Imagine that you are selling shirts that have the following properties:

PUT /shirts
{
    "mappings": {
        "item": {
            "properties": {
                "brand": { "type": "keyword"},
                "color": { "type": "keyword"},
                "model": { "type": "keyword"}
            }
        }
    }
}

PUT /shirts/item/1?refresh
{
    "brand": "gucci",
    "color": "red",
    "model": "slim"
}
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Imagine a user has specified two filters:

color:red and brand:gucci. You only want to show them red shirts made by Gucci in the search results. Normally you would do this with a bool query:

GET /shirts/_search
{
  "query": {
    "bool": {
      "filter": [
        { "term": { "color": "red"   }},
        { "term": { "brand": "gucci" }}
      ]
    }
  }
}
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However, you would also like to use faceted navigation to display a list of other options that the user could click on. Perhaps you have a model field that would allow the user to limit their search results to red Gucci t-shirts or dress-shirts.

This can be done with a terms aggregation:

GET /shirts/_search
{
  "query": {
    "bool": {
      "filter": [
        { "term": { "color": "red"   }},
        { "term": { "brand": "gucci" }}
      ]
    }
  },
  "aggs": {
    "models": {
      "terms": { "field": "model" } 
    }
  }
}
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Returns the most popular models of red shirts by Gucci.

But perhaps you would also like to tell the user how many Gucci shirts are available in other colors. If you just add a terms aggregation on the color field, you will only get back the color red, because your query returns only red shirts by Gucci.

Instead, you want to include shirts of all colors during aggregation, then apply the colors filter only to the search results. This is the purpose of the post_filter:

GET /shirts/_search
{
  "query": {
    "bool": {
      "filter": {
        "term": { "brand": "gucci" } 
      }
    }
  },
  "aggs": {
    "colors": {
      "terms": { "field": "color" } 
    },
    "color_red": {
      "filter": {
        "term": { "color": "red" } 
      },
      "aggs": {
        "models": {
          "terms": { "field": "model" } 
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "post_filter": { 
    "term": { "color": "red" }
  }
}
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The main query now finds all shirts by Gucci, regardless of color.

The colors agg returns popular colors for shirts by Gucci.

The color_red agg limits the models sub-aggregation to red Gucci shirts.

Finally, the post_filter removes colors other than red from the search hits.
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