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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:

GET /_search
{
  "query": {
    "simple_query_string" : {
        "query": "\"fried eggs\" +(eggplant | potato) -frittata",
        "fields": ["title^5", "body"],
        "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 ``. `` extracts all fields in the mapping that are eligible to term queries and filters the metadata fields.
`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`	Force the analyzer to use to analyze each term of the query when creating composite queries.
`flags`	A set of flags specifying which features of the `simple_query_string` to enable. Defaults to `ALL`.
`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`.
`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.
`quote_field_suffix`	A suffix to append to fields for quoted parts of the query string. This allows to use a field that has a different analysis chain for exact matching. Look here for a comprehensive example.
`auto_generate_synonyms_phrase_query`	Whether phrase queries should be automatically generated for multi terms synonyms. Defaults to `true`.
`all_fields`	[6.0.0] Deprecated in 6.0.0. set `default_field` to `*` instead Perform the query on all fields detected in the mapping that can be queried. Will be used by default when the `_all` field is disabled and no `default_field` is specified (either in the index settings or in the request body) and no `fields` are specified.
`fuzzy_prefix_length`	Set the prefix length for fuzzy queries. Default is `0`.
`fuzzy_max_expansions`	Controls the number of terms fuzzy queries will expand to. Defaults to `50`
`fuzzy_transpositions`	Set to `false` to disable fuzzy transpositions (`ab` → `ba`). Default is `true`.

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 \.

Be aware that this syntax may have a different behavior depending on the default_operator value. For example, consider the following query:

GET /_search
{
    "query": {
        "simple_query_string" : {
            "fields" : ["content"],
            "query" : "foo bar -baz"
        }
    }
}

You may expect that documents containing only "foo" or "bar" will be returned, as long as they do not contain "baz", however, due to the default_operator being OR, this really means "match documents that contain "foo" or documents that contain "bar", or documents that don’t contain "baz". If this is unintended then the query can be switched to "foo bar +-baz" which will not return documents that contain "baz".

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 fields to search on. It defaults to * and the query will automatically attempt to determine the existing fields in the index’s mapping that are queryable, and perform the search on those fields.

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:

GET /_search
{
    "query": {
        "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:

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

The available flags are:

Flag	Description
`ALL`	Enables all parsing features. This is the default.
`NONE`	Switches off all parsing features.
`AND`	Enables the `+` AND operator.
`OR`	Enables the `\|` OR operator.
`NOT`	Enables the `-` NOT operator.
`PREFIX`	Enables the `*` Prefix operator.
`PHRASE`	Enables the `"` quotes operator used to search for phrases.
`PRECEDENCE`	Enables the `(` and `)` operators to control operator precedence.
`ESCAPE`	Enables `\` as the escape character.
`WHITESPACE`	Enables whitespaces as split characters.
`FUZZY`	Enables the `~N` operator after a word where N is an integer denoting the allowed edit distance for matching (see Fuzziness).
`SLOP`	Enables the `~N` operator after a phrase where N is an integer denoting the slop amount.
`NEAR`	Synonymous to `SLOP`.

Synonyms

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The simple_query_string query supports multi-terms synonym expansion with the synonym_graph token filter. When this filter is used, the parser creates a phrase query for each multi-terms synonyms. For example, the following synonym: "ny, new york" would produce:

(ny OR ("new york"))

It is also possible to match multi terms synonyms with conjunctions instead:

GET /_search
{
   "query": {
       "simple_query_string" : {
           "query" : "ny city",
           "auto_generate_synonyms_phrase_query" : false
       }
   }
}

The example above creates a boolean query:

(ny OR (new AND york)) city)

that matches documents with the term ny or the conjunction new AND york. By default the parameter auto_generate_synonyms_phrase_query is set to true.

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