How to match first and last names with Elasticsearch? - elasticsearch

Question

A typical Elasticsearch JSON response is kind of like:
[
{
"_index": "articles",
"_id": "993",
"_score": 10.443843,
"_source": {
"title": "This is a test title",
"authors": [
{
first_name: 'john',
last_name: 'smith'
},
How can I query for all articles where one of the authors is 'john smith'? Currently I have:
const {
hits: { hits }
} = await client.search({
index: "articles",
body: {
query: {
bool: {
should: [
{
match: {
"authors.first_name": "john"
}
},
{
match: {
"authors.first_name": "Smith"
}
}
]
}
}
}
});
But this returns articles where first or last name are john or smith, not articles with a 'john smith' as an author.

Answer 1

I think you are facing nested vs. object dilemma here. You can achieve what you are looking for by changing the type of authors field to nested type (you didn't share your index mapping so I'm assuming here) and using this query
{
"query":{
"nested":{
"path":"authors",
"query":{
"bool":{
"must":[
{
"match":{
"authors.firstName":{
"query":"john"
}
}
},
{
"match":{
"authors.lastName":{
"query":"Smith"
}
}
}
]
}
}
}
}
}
Hope that helps.

Answer 2

Well in this case your using a "should" statement which can be explained as
firstname:john OR lastname:smith
this can be easily fix with a "must" instead, which can be explained as
firstname:john AND lastname:smith
Also as rob mention in his response, nested vs object is indeed a dilema.
but this dilema would appear when you're treating with arrays of information.
for example you have the following entry
entry #1
{
"serviceType": "mysql",
"allowedUsers": [
{
"firstName": "Daniel",
"lastName": "Acevedo"
},
{
"firstName": "John",
"lastName": "Smith"
},
{
"firstName": "Mike",
"lastName": "K"
}
]
}
and you do the following search
{
"size": 10,
"query": {
"query_string": {
"query": "allowedUsers.firstName:john AND allowedUsers.lastName:acevedo"
}
}
}
you WILL have a match in the document because because both firstName and lastName match your document even though they match in different user objects. this is an example of OBJECT mapping.
in this case there is no work around, and you must use NESTED mapping in order to acomplish a natural match.
in your specific case i dont think you're facing this so going with OBJECT and MUST (AND instead of should (OR)) query you should do fine.
if you need further explanation let me know I'll make an edit with more details.
cheers.