Querystring search on array elements in Elastic Search

Question

I\'m trying to learn elasticsearch with a simple example application, that lists quotations associated with people. The example mapping might look like:

{ 
          


        

Answer 1

If scripting is enabled, this should work:

"script": {
   "inline": "for(element in _source.quotations) { if(element == 'this' && element == 'these') {return true;} }; return false;"
 }

Answer 2

For that requirement to be achieved, you need to look at nested objects, not to query a flattened list of values but individual values from that nested object. For example:

{
  "mappings": {
    "people": {
      "properties": {
        "name": {
          "type": "string"
        },
        "quotations": {
          "type": "nested",
          "properties": {
            "value": {
              "type": "string"
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Values:

{"name":"Mr A","quotations":[{"value": "quotation one, this and that and these"}, {"value": "quotation two, those and that"}]}
{"name":"Mr B","quotations":[{"value": "quotation three, this and that"}, {"value": "quotation four, those and these"}]}

Query:

{
  "query": {
    "nested": {
      "path": "quotations",
      "query": {
        "bool": {
          "must": [
            { "match": {"quotations.value": "this"}},
            { "match": {"quotations.value": "these"}}
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Answer 3

Unfortunately there is no good way to do that. https://web.archive.org/web/20141021073225/http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/complex-core-fields.html

When you get a document back from Elasticsearch, any arrays will be in the same order as when you indexed the document. The _source field that you get back contains exactly the same JSON document that you indexed.

However, arrays are indexed — made searchable — as multi-value fields, which are unordered. At search time you can’t refer to “the first element” or “the last element”. Rather think of an array as a bag of values.

In other words, it is always considering all values in the array.

This will return only Mr A

{
  "query": {
    "match": {
      "quotations": {
        "query": "quotation one",
        "operator": "AND"
      }
    }
  }
}

But this will return both Mr A & Mr B:

{
  "query": {
    "match": {
      "quotations": {
        "query": "this these",
        "operator": "AND"
      }
    }
  }
}