Simple query without a specified field searching in whole ElasticSearch index - elasticsearch

Question

Say we have an ElasticSearch instance and one index. I now want to search the whole index for documents that contain a specific value. It's relevant to the search for this query over multiple fields, so I don't want to specify every field to search in.
My attempt so far (using NEST) is the following:
var res2 = client.Search<ElasticCompanyModelDTO>(s => s.Index("cvr-permanent").AllTypes().
Query(q => q
.Bool(bo => bo
.Must( sh => sh
.Term(c=>c.Value(query))
)
)
));
However, the query above results in an empty query:
I get the following output, ### ES REQEUST ### {} , after applying the following debug on my connectionstring:
.DisableDirectStreaming()
.OnRequestCompleted(details =>
{
Debug.WriteLine("### ES REQEUST ###");
if (details.RequestBodyInBytes != null) Debug.WriteLine(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(details.RequestBodyInBytes));
})
.PrettyJson();
How do I do this? Why is my query wrong?

Answer 1

Your problem is that you must specify a single field to search as part of a TermQuery. In fact, all ElasticSearch queries require a field or fields to be specified as part of the query. If you want to search every field in your document, you can use the built-in "_all" field (unless you've disabled it in your mapping.)
You should be sure you really want a TermQuery, too, since that will only match exact strings in the text. This type of query is typically used when querying short, unanalyzed string fields (for example, a field containing an enumeration of known values like US state abbreviations.)
If you'd like to query longer full-text fields, consider the MultiMatchQuery (it lets you specify multiple fields, too.)
https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-multi-match-query.html

Answer 2

Try this
var res2 = client.Search<ElasticCompanyModelDTO>(s =>
s.Index("cvr-permanent").AllTypes()
.Query(qry => qry
.Bool(b => b
.Must(m => m
.QueryString(qs => qs
.DefaultField("_all")
.Query(query))))));

Answer 3

The existing answers rely on the presence of _all. In case anyone comes across this question at a later date, it is worth knowing that _all was removed in ElasticSearch 6.0
There's a really good video explaining the reasons behind this and the way the replacements work from ElasticOn starting at around 07:30 in.
In short, the _all query can be replaced by a simple_query_string and it will work with same way. The form for the _search API would be;
GET <index>/_search
{
"query": {
"simple_query_string" : {
"query": "<queryTerm>"
}
}
}
The NEST pages on Elastic's documentation for this query are here;