URI Search

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A search request can be executed purely using a URI by providing request parameters. Not all search options are exposed when executing a search using this mode, but it can be handy for quick "curl tests". Here is an example:

$ curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/twitter/tweet/_search?q=user:kimchy'

And here is a sample response:

{
    "_shards":{
        "total" : 5,
        "successful" : 5,
        "failed" : 0
    },
    "hits":{
        "total" : 1,
        "hits" : [
            {
                "_index" : "twitter",
                "_type" : "tweet",
                "_id" : "1",
                "_source" : {
                    "user" : "kimchy",
                    "postDate" : "2009-11-15T14:12:12",
                    "message" : "trying out Elasticsearch"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

Parameters

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The parameters allowed in the URI are:

Name Description

q

The query string (maps to the query_string query, see Query String Query for more details).

df

The default field to use when no field prefix is defined within the query.

analyzer

The analyzer name to be used when analyzing the query string.

lowercase_expanded_terms

Should terms be automatically lowercased or not. Defaults to true.

analyze_wildcard

Should wildcard and prefix queries be analyzed or not. Defaults to false.

default_operator

The default operator to be used, can be AND or OR. Defaults to OR.

lenient

If set to true will cause format based failures (like providing text to a numeric field) to be ignored. Defaults to false.

explain

For each hit, contain an explanation of how scoring of the hits was computed.

_source

Set to false to disable retrieval of the _source field. You can also retrieve part of the document by using _source_include & _source_exclude (see the request body documentation for more details)

fields

The selective stored fields of the document to return for each hit, comma delimited. Not specifying any value will cause no fields to return.

sort

Sorting to perform. Can either be in the form of fieldName, or fieldName:asc/fieldName:desc. The fieldName can either be an actual field within the document, or the special _score name to indicate sorting based on scores. There can be several sort parameters (order is important).

track_scores

When sorting, set to true in order to still track scores and return them as part of each hit.

timeout

A search timeout, bounding the search request to be executed within the specified time value and bail with the hits accumulated up to that point when expired. Defaults to no timeout.

terminate_after

[preview] This functionality is in technical preview and may be changed or removed in a future release. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but features in technical preview are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features. The maximum number of documents to collect for each shard, upon reaching which the query execution will terminate early. If set, the response will have a boolean field terminated_early to indicate whether the query execution has actually terminated_early. Defaults to no terminate_after.

from

The starting from index of the hits to return. Defaults to 0.

size

The number of hits to return. Defaults to 10.

search_type

The type of the search operation to perform. Can be dfs_query_then_fetch, dfs_query_and_fetch, query_then_fetch, query_and_fetch, count, scan. Defaults to query_then_fetch. See Search Type for more details on the different types of search that can be performed.