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WARNING: Version 1.7 of Elasticsearch has passed its EOL date.

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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [1.7] ›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. It’s purpose is best explained by example:

Imagine that you are selling shirts, and the 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 filtered query:

curl -XGET localhost:9200/shirts/_search -d '
{
  "query": {
    "filtered": {
      "filter": {
        "bool": {
          "must": [
            { "term": { "color": "red"   }},
            { "term": { "brand": "gucci" }}
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
'

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:

curl -XGET localhost:9200/shirts/_search -d '
{
  "query": {
    "filtered": {
      "filter": {
        "bool": {
          "must": [
            { "term": { "color": "red"   }},
            { "term": { "brand": "gucci" }}
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "aggs": {
    "models": {
      "terms": { "field": "model" } 
    }
  }
}
'

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:

curl -XGET localhost:9200/shirts/_search -d '
{
  "query": {
    "filtered": {
      "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" }
  }
}
'

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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