Search query for elasticsearch when child element is array of string - elasticsearch

Question

I created a documents in elasticsearch in the following format
curl -XPUT "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/" -d'
{
"specific_location": {
"location_name": "Mumbai",
"location_tags": [
"Mumbai"
],
"tags": [
"Mumbai"
]
}
}'
My requirement is to search for location_tags containing one of the given options like ["Mumbai", "Pune"]. How do I do this?
I tried:
curl -XGET "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/_search" -d '
{
"query": {
"filtered": {
"query": {
"match_all": {}
},
"filter": {
"terms": {
"specific_location.location_tags" : ["Mumbai"]
}
}
}
}
}'
which didn't work.
I got this output :
{
"took": 72,
"timed_out": false,
"_shards": {
"total": 5,
"successful": 5,
"failed": 0
},
"hits": {
"total": 0,
"max_score": null,
"hits": []
}
}

Answer 1

There are a several ways to solve this. Perhaps the most immediate one is to search for mumbai instead of Mumbai.
If I create the index with no mapping,
curl -XDELETE "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/"
curl -XPUT "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/"
then add a doc:
curl -XPUT "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/doc/1" -d'
{
"specific_location": {
"location_name": "Mumbai",
"location_tags": [
"Mumbai"
],
"tags": [
"Mumbai"
]
}
}'
then run your query with the lower-case term
curl -XPOST "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/_search" -d'
{
"query": {
"filtered": {
"query": {
"match_all": {}
},
"filter": {
"terms": {
"specific_location.location_tags": [
"mumbai"
]
}
}
}
}
}'
I get back the expected doc:
{
"took": 3,
"timed_out": false,
"_shards": {
"total": 5,
"successful": 5,
"failed": 0
},
"hits": {
"total": 1,
"max_score": 1,
"hits": [
{
"_index": "my_base.main_candidate",
"_type": "doc",
"_id": "1",
"_score": 1,
"_source": {
"specific_location": {
"location_name": "Mumbai",
"location_tags": [
"Mumbai"
],
"tags": [
"Mumbai"
]
}
}
}
]
}
}
This is because, since no explicit mapping was used, Elasticsearch uses defaults, which means the location_tags field will be analyzed with the standard analyzer, which will convert terms to lower-case. So the term Mumbai does not exist, but mumbai does.
If you want to be able to use upper-case terms in your query, you will need to set up an explicit mapping that tells Elasticsearch not to analyze the location_tags field. Maybe something like this:
curl -XDELETE "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/"
curl -XPUT "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/" -d'
{
"mappings": {
"doc": {
"properties": {
"specific_location": {
"properties": {
"location_tags": {
"type": "string",
"index": "not_analyzed"
},
"tags": {
"type": "string",
"index": "not_analyzed"
}
}
}
}
}
}
}'
curl -XPUT "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/doc/1" -d'
{
"specific_location": {
"location_name": "Mumbai",
"location_tags": [
"Mumbai"
],
"tags": [
"Mumbai"
]
}
}'
curl -XPOST "http://localhost:9200/my_base.main_candidate/_search" -d'
{
"query": {
"filtered": {
"query": {
"match_all": {}
},
"filter": {
"terms": {
"specific_location.location_tags": [
"Mumbai"
]
}
}
}
}
}'
Here is all the above code in a handy place:
http://sense.qbox.io/gist/74844f4d779f7c2b94a9ab65fd76eb0ffe294cbb
[EDIT: by the way, I used Elasticsearch 1.3.4 when testing the above code]