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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [8.11] ›REST APIs ›Search APIs

Multi search API

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Multi search API

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Executes several searches with a single API request.

response = client.msearch(
  index: 'my-index-000001',
  body: [
    {},
    {
      query: {
        match: {
          message: 'this is a test'
        }
      }
    },
    {
      index: 'my-index-000002'
    },
    {
      query: {
        match_all: {}
      }
    }
  ]
)
puts response
GET my-index-000001/_msearch
{ }
{"query" : {"match" : { "message": "this is a test"}}}
{"index": "my-index-000002"}
{"query" : {"match_all" : {}}}

Request

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GET /<target>/_msearch

Prerequisites

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  • If the Elasticsearch security features are enabled, you must have the read index privilege for the target data stream, index, or alias. For cross-cluster search, see Remote clusters.

Description

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The multi search API executes several searches from a single API request. The format of the request is similar to the bulk API format and makes use of the newline delimited JSON (NDJSON) format.

The structure is as follows:

header\n
body\n
header\n
body\n

This structure is specifically optimized to reduce parsing if a specific search ends up redirected to another node.

The final line of data must end with a newline character \n. Each newline character may be preceded by a carriage return \r. When sending requests to this endpoint the Content-Type header should be set to application/x-ndjson.

Path parameters

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<target>

(Optional, string) Comma-separated list of data streams, indices, and aliases to search.

This list acts as a fallback if a search in the request body does not specify an index target.

Wildcard (*) expressions are supported. To search all data streams and indices in a cluster, omit this parameter or use _all or *.

Query parameters

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allow_no_indices
(Optional, Boolean) If false, the request returns an error if any wildcard expression, index alias, or _all value targets only missing or closed indices. This behavior applies even if the request targets other open indices. For example, a request targeting foo*,bar* returns an error if an index starts with foo but no index starts with bar.
ccs_minimize_roundtrips
(Optional, Boolean) If true, network roundtrips between the coordinating node and remote clusters are minimized for cross-cluster search requests. Defaults to true. See How cross-cluster search handles network delays.
expand_wildcards

(Optional, string) Type of index that wildcard patterns can match. If the request can target data streams, this argument determines whether wildcard expressions match hidden data streams. Supports comma-separated values, such as open,hidden. Valid values are:

all
Match any data stream or index, including hidden ones.
open
Match open, non-hidden indices. Also matches any non-hidden data stream.
closed
Match closed, non-hidden indices. Also matches any non-hidden data stream. Data streams cannot be closed.
hidden
Match hidden data streams and hidden indices. Must be combined with open, closed, or both.
none
Wildcard patterns are not accepted.

Defaults to open.

ignore_throttled

(Optional, Boolean) If true, concrete, expanded or aliased indices are ignored when frozen. Defaults to true.

[7.16.0] Deprecated in 7.16.0.

ignore_unavailable
(Optional, Boolean) If false, the request returns an error if it targets a missing or closed index. Defaults to false.
max_concurrent_searches
(Optional, integer) Maximum number of concurrent searches the multi search API can execute. Defaults to max(1, (# of data nodes * min(search thread pool size, 10))).
max_concurrent_shard_requests

(Optional, integer) Maximum number of concurrent shard requests that each sub-search request executes per node. Defaults to 5.

You can use this parameter to prevent a request from overloading a cluster. For example, a default request hits all data streams and indices in a cluster. This could cause shard request rejections if the number of shards per node is high.

In certain scenarios, parallelism isn’t achieved through concurrent requests. In those cases, a low value in this parameter could result in poor performance. For example, in an environment where a very low number of concurrent search requests are expected, a higher value in this parameter may improve performance.

pre_filter_shard_size

(Optional, integer) Defines a threshold that enforces a pre-filter roundtrip to prefilter search shards based on query rewriting if the number of shards the search request expands to exceeds the threshold. This filter roundtrip can limit the number of shards significantly if for instance a shard can not match any documents based on its rewrite method i.e., if date filters are mandatory to match but the shard bounds and the query are disjoint. When unspecified, the pre-filter phase is executed if any of these conditions is met:

  • The request targets more than 128 shards.
  • The request targets one or more read-only index.
  • The primary sort of the query targets an indexed field.
rest_total_hits_as_int
(Optional, Boolean) If true, hits.total are returned as an integer in the response. Defaults to false, which returns an object.
routing
(Optional, string) Custom routing value used to route search operations to a specific shard.
search_type

(Optional, string) Indicates whether global term and document frequencies should be used when scoring returned documents.

Options are:

query_then_fetch
(default) Documents are scored using local term and document frequencies for the shard. This is usually faster but less accurate.
dfs_query_then_fetch
Documents are scored using global term and document frequencies across all shards. This is usually slower but more accurate.
typed_keys
(Optional, Boolean) Specifies whether aggregation and suggester names should be prefixed by their respective types in the response.

Request body

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The request body contains a newline-delimited list of search <header> and search <body> objects.

<header>

(Required, object) Parameters used to limit or change the search.

This object is required for each search body but can be empty ({}) or a blank line.

Properties of <header> objects
allow_no_indices

(Optional, Boolean) If true, the request does not return an error if a wildcard expression or _all value retrieves only missing or closed indices.

This parameter also applies to aliases that point to a missing or index.

expand_wildcards

(Optional, string) Type of index that wildcard patterns can match. If the request can target data streams, this argument determines whether wildcard expressions match hidden data streams. Supports comma-separated values, such as open,hidden. Valid values are:

all
Match any data stream or index, including hidden ones.
open
Match open, non-hidden indices. Also matches any non-hidden data stream.
closed
Match closed, non-hidden indices. Also matches any non-hidden data stream. Data streams cannot be closed.
hidden
Match hidden data streams and hidden indices. Must be combined with open, closed, or both.
none
Wildcard patterns are not accepted.

Defaults to open.

ignore_unavailable
(Optional, Boolean) If true, documents from missing or closed indices are not included in the response. Defaults to false.
index

(Optional, string or array of strings) Data streams, indices, and aliases to search. Supports wildcards (*). Specify multiple targets as an array.

If this parameter is not specified, the <target> request path parameter is used as a fallback.

preference
(Optional, string) Node or shard used to perform the search. Random by default.
request_cache
(Optional, Boolean) If true, the request cache can be used for this search. Defaults to index-level settings. See Shard request cache settings.
routing
(Optional, string) Custom routing value used to route search operations to a specific shard.
search_type

(Optional, string) Indicates whether global term and document frequencies should be used when scoring returned documents.

Options are:

query_then_fetch
(default) Documents are scored using local term and document frequencies for the shard. This is usually faster but less accurate.
dfs_query_then_fetch
Documents are scored using global term and document frequencies across all shards. This is usually slower but more accurate.
<body>

(Optional, object) Contains parameters for a search request:

Properties of <body> objects
aggregations
(Optional, aggregation object) Aggregations you wish to run during the search. See Aggregations.
query
(Optional, Query DSL object) Query you wish to run during the search. Hits matching this query are returned in the response.
from
(Optional, integer) Starting offset for returned hits. Defaults to 0.
size
(Optional, integer) Number of hits to return. Defaults to 10.

Response body

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responses
(array) Includes the search response and status code for each search request matching its order in the original multi search request. If there was a complete failure for a specific search request, an object with error message and corresponding status code will be returned in place of the actual search response.

Examples

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The header includes the data streams, indices, and aliases to search. The header also indicates the search_type, preference, and routing. The body includes the typical search body request (including the query, aggregations, from, size, and so on).

$ cat requests
{"index" : "test"}
{"query" : {"match_all" : {}}, "from" : 0, "size" : 10}
{"index" : "test", "search_type" : "dfs_query_then_fetch"}
{"query" : {"match_all" : {}}}
{}
{"query" : {"match_all" : {}}}

{"query" : {"match_all" : {}}}
{"search_type" : "dfs_query_then_fetch"}
{"query" : {"match_all" : {}}}
$ curl -H "Content-Type: application/x-ndjson" -XGET localhost:9200/_msearch --data-binary "@requests"; echo

Note, the above includes an example of an empty header (can also be just without any content) which is supported as well.

The endpoint also allows you to search against data streams, indices, and aliases in the request path. In this case, it will be used as the default target unless explicitly specified in the header’s index parameter. For example:

response = client.msearch(
  index: 'my-index-000001',
  body: [
    {},
    {
      query: {
        match_all: {}
      },
      from: 0,
      size: 10
    },
    {},
    {
      query: {
        match_all: {}
      }
    },
    {
      index: 'my-index-000002'
    },
    {
      query: {
        match_all: {}
      }
    }
  ]
)
puts response
GET my-index-000001/_msearch
{}
{"query" : {"match_all" : {}}, "from" : 0, "size" : 10}
{}
{"query" : {"match_all" : {}}}
{"index" : "my-index-000002"}
{"query" : {"match_all" : {}}}

The above will execute the search against the my-index-000001 index for all the requests that don’t define an index target in the request body. The last search will be executed against the my-index-000002 index.

The search_type can be set in a similar manner to globally apply to all search requests.

Security

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See URL-based access control

Partial responses

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To ensure fast responses, the multi search API will respond with partial results if one or more shards fail. See Shard failures for more information.

Search Cancellation

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Multi searches can be cancelled using standard task cancellation mechanism and are also automatically cancelled when the http connection used to perform the request is closed by the client. It is fundamental that the http client sending requests closes connections whenever requests time out or are aborted. Cancelling an msearch request will also cancel all of the corresponding sub search requests.

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