Search by slug in Elasticsearch - elasticsearch

Question

I have an index named homes. Here is the simplified mapping of it:
{
"template": "homes",
"index_patterns": "homes",
"settings": {
"index.refresh_interval": "60s"
},
"mappings": {
"properties": {
"status": {
"type": "keyword"
},
"address": {
"type": "keyword",
"fields": {
"suggest": {
"type": "search_as_you_type"
},
"search": {
"type": "text"
}
}
}
}
}
}
As you can see, there is an address field which I query this way:
{
"query": {
"bool": {
"filter": [
{
"term": {
"status": "sale"
}
},
{
"term": {
"address": "406 - 533 Richmond St W"
}
}
]
}
}
}
Now my problem is that I need to be able to query with slugyfied version of the address field as well. For example, I need to query like this:
{
"query": {
"bool": {
"filter": [
{
"term": {
"status": "sale"
}
},
{
"term": {
"address": "406-533-richmond-st-w"
}
}
]
}
}
}
So, instead of 406 - 533 Richmond St W I need to query 406-533-richmond-st-w. How can I do that? I was thinking of adding a new field address_slug which is the slugyfied version of address but I need it to be auto populated so I don't need to manually fill this field every time that I insert or update a document in the index.

Answer 1

If you create a custom analyzer with the token filters below and another field for search that uses the custom analyzer, you can achieve this. Here is an example analyze result and output:
GET {index}/_analyze
{
"tokenizer": "keyword",
"filter": [
{
"type": "lowercase"
},
{
"type": "pattern_replace",
"pattern": """[^A-Za-z0-9]+""",
"replacement": "-"
}
],
"text": "406 - 533 Richmond St W"
}
Output:
{
"tokens" : [
{
"token" : "406-533-richmond-st-w",
"start_offset" : 0,
"end_offset" : 23,
"type" : "word",
"position" : 0
}
]
}