Find distinct values, not distinct counts in elasticsearch

Question

Elasticsearch documentation suggests* that their piece of code

*documentation fixed

GET /cars/transactions/_search?search_type=         


        

Answer 1

Use a terms aggregation on the color field. And you need to pay attention to how that field you want to get distinct values on is analyzed, meaning you need to make sure you're not tokenizing it while indexing, otherwise every entry in the aggregation will be a different term that is part of the field content.

If you still want tokenization AND to use the terms aggregation you might want to look at not_analyzed type of indexing for that field, and maybe use multi fields.

Terms aggregation for cars:

GET /cars/transactions/_search?search_type=count
{
  "aggs": {
    "distinct_colors": {
      "terms": {
        "field": "color",
        "size": 1000
      }
    }
  }
}