Count API

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Gets the number of matches for a search query.

GET /twitter/_count?q=user:kimchy

The query being sent in the body must be nested in a query key, same as the search api works.

Request

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GET /<index>/_count

Description

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The count API allows you to execute a query and get the number of matches for that query. It can be executed across one or more indices. The query can either be provided using a simple query string as a parameter, or using the Query DSL defined within the request body.

The count API can be applied to multiple indices.

The operation is broadcast across all shards. For each shard id group, a replica is chosen and executed against it. This means that replicas increase the scalability of count.

Path parameters

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<index>
(Optional, string) Comma-separated list or wildcard expression of index names used to limit the request.

Query parameters

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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 index aliases that point to a missing or closed index.

Defaults to true.

analyzer
(Optional, string) Analyzer to use for the query string.
analyze_wildcard
(Optional, boolean) If true, wildcard and prefix queries are analyzed. Defaults to false.
default_operator
(Optional, string) The default operator for query string query: AND or OR. Defaults to OR.
df
(Optional, string) Field to use as default where no field prefix is given in the query string.
expand_wildcards

(Optional, string) Controls what kind of indices that wildcard expressions can expand to. Valid values are:

all
Expand to open and closed indices.
open
Expand only to open indices.
closed
Expand only to closed indices.
none
Wildcard expressions are not accepted.

Defaults to open.

ignore_throttled
(Optional, boolean) If true, concrete, expanded or aliased indices are ignored when throttled.
ignore_unavailable
(Optional, boolean) If true, missing or closed indices are not included in the response. Defaults to false.
lenient
(Optional, boolean) If true, format-based query failures (such as providing text to a numeric field) will be ignored. Defaults to false.
min_score
(Optional, float) Sets the minimum _score value that documents must have to be included in the result.
preference
(Optional, string) Specifies the node or shard the operation should be performed on. Random by default.
q
(Optional, string) Query in the Lucene query string syntax.
routing
(Optional, string) Target the specified primary shard.
terminate_after
(Optional, integer) The maximum number of documents to collect for each shard, upon reaching which the query execution will terminate early.

Request body

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query
(Optional, query object) Defines the search definition using the Query DSL.

Examples

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PUT /twitter/_doc/1?refresh
{
    "user": "kimchy"
}

GET /twitter/_count?q=user:kimchy

GET /twitter/_count
{
    "query" : {
        "term" : { "user" : "kimchy" }
    }
}

Both examples above do the same: count the number of tweets from the twitter index for a certain user. The API returns the following response:

{
    "count" : 1,
    "_shards" : {
        "total" : 1,
        "successful" : 1,
        "skipped" : 0,
        "failed" : 0
    }
}

The query is optional, and when not provided, it will use match_all to count all the docs.