Version field type

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The version field type is a specialization of the keyword field for handling software version values and to support specialized precedence rules for them. Precedence is defined following the rules outlined by Semantic Versioning, which for example means that major, minor and patch version parts are sorted numerically (i.e. "2.1.0" < "2.4.1" < "2.11.2") and pre-release versions are sorted before release versions (i.e. "1.0.0-alpha" < "1.0.0").

You index a version field as follows

PUT my-index-000001
{
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "my_version": {
        "type": "version"
      }
    }
  }
}

The field offers the same search capabilities as a regular keyword field. It can e.g. be searched for exact matches using match or term queries and supports prefix and wildcard searches. The main benefit is that range queries will honor Semver ordering, so a range query between "1.0.0" and "1.5.0" will include versions of "1.2.3" but not "1.11.2" for example. Note that this would be different when using a regular keyword field for indexing where ordering is alphabetical.

Software versions are expected to follow the Semantic Versioning rules schema and precedence rules with the notable exception that more or less than three main version identifiers are allowed (i.e. "1.2" or "1.2.3.4" qualify as valid versions while they wouldn’t under strict Semver rules). Version strings that are not valid under the Semver definition (e.g. "1.2.alpha.4") can still be indexed and retrieved as exact matches, however they will all appear after any valid version with regular alphabetical ordering. The empty String "" is considered invalid and sorted after all valid versions, but before other invalid ones.

Parameters for version fields

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The following parameters are accepted by version fields:

meta

Metadata about the field.

Limitations

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This field type isn’t optimized for heavy wildcard, regex or fuzzy searches. While those type of queries work in this field, you should consider using a regular keyword field if you strongly rely on these kind of queries.

Synthetic _source [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.

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version fields support synthetic _source so long as they don’t declare copy_to.

Synthetic source always sorts version fields and removes duplicates. For example:

PUT idx
{
  "mappings": {
    "_source": { "mode": "synthetic" },
    "properties": {
      "versions": { "type": "version" }
    }
  }
}
PUT idx/_doc/1
{
  "versions": ["8.0.0-beta1", "8.5.0", "0.90.12", "2.6.1", "1.3.4", "1.3.4"]
}

Will become:

{
  "versions": ["0.90.12", "1.3.4", "2.6.1", "8.0.0-beta1", "8.5.0"]
}