ElasticSearch analyzer that allows for query both with and without hypens - elasticsearch

Question

How do you construct an analyzer that allows you to query fields both with and without hyphens?
The following two queries must return the same person:
{
"query": {
"term": {
"name": {
"value": "Jay-Z"
}
}
}
}
{
"query": {
"term": {
"name": {
"value": "jay z"
}
}
}
}

Answer 1

What you could do is use a mapping character filter in order to replace the hyphen with a space. Basically, like this:
curl -XPUT localhost:9200/tests -d '{
"settings": {
"analysis": {
"analyzer": {
"my_analyzer": {
"tokenizer": "keyword",
"filter": [
"lowercase"
],
"char_filter": [
"hyphens"
]
}
},
"char_filter": {
"hyphens": {
"type": "mapping",
"mappings": [
"-=>\\u0020"
]
}
}
}
},
"mappings": {
"test": {
"properties": {
"name": {
"type": "string",
"analyzer": "my_analyzer"
}
}
}
}
}'
Then we can check what the analysis pipeline would yield using the _analyze endpoint:
For Jay-Z:
curl -XGET 'localhost:9200/tests/_analyze?pretty&analyzer=my_analyzer' -d 'Jay-Z'
{
"tokens" : [ {
"token" : "jay z",
"start_offset" : 0,
"end_offset" : 5,
"type" : "word",
"position" : 0
} ]
}
For jay z:
curl -XGET 'localhost:9200/tests/_analyze?pretty&analyzer=my_analyzer' -d 'jay z'
{
"tokens" : [ {
"token" : "jay z",
"start_offset" : 0,
"end_offset" : 5,
"type" : "word",
"position" : 0
} ]
}
As you can see the same token is going to be indexed for both forms so your term query will work with both forms as well.