[[query-dsl-match-query]] == Match Query A family of `match` queries that accept text/numerics/dates, analyzes it, and constructs a query out of it. For example: [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match" : { "message" : "this is a test" } } -------------------------------------------------- Note, `message` is the name of a field, you can substitute the name of any field (including `_all`) instead. [float] ==== Types of Match Queries [float] ===== boolean The default `match` query is of type `boolean`. It means that the text provided is analyzed and the analysis process constructs a boolean query from the provided text. The `operator` flag can be set to `or` or `and` to control the boolean clauses (defaults to `or`). The minimum number of optional `should` clauses to match can be set using the <> parameter. The `analyzer` can be set to control which analyzer will perform the analysis process on the text. It defaults to the field explicit mapping definition, or the default search analyzer. `fuzziness` allows _fuzzy matching_ based on the type of field being queried. See <> for allowed settings. The `prefix_length` and `max_expansions` can be set in this case to control the fuzzy process. If the fuzzy option is set the query will use `constant_score_rewrite` as its <> the `fuzzy_rewrite` parameter allows to control how the query will get rewritten. Here is an example when providing additional parameters (note the slight change in structure, `message` is the field name): [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match" : { "message" : { "query" : "this is a test", "operator" : "and" } } } -------------------------------------------------- .zero_terms_query If the analyzer used removes all tokens in a query like a `stop` filter does, the default behavior is to match no documents at all. In order to change that the `zero_terms_query` option can be used, which accepts `none` (default) and `all` which corresponds to a `match_all` query. [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match" : { "message" : { "query" : "to be or not to be", "operator" : "and", "zero_terms_query": "all" } } } -------------------------------------------------- .cutoff_frequency The match query supports a `cutoff_frequency` that allows specifying an absolute or relative document frequency where high frequency terms are moved into an optional subquery and are only scored if one of the low frequency (below the cutoff) terms in the case of an `or` operator or all of the low frequency terms in the case of an `and` operator match. This query allows handling `stopwords` dynamically at runtime, is domain independent and doesn't require a stopword file. It prevents scoring / iterating high frequency terms and only takes the terms into account if a more significant / lower frequency term matches a document. Yet, if all of the query terms are above the given `cutoff_frequency` the query is automatically transformed into a pure conjunction (`and`) query to ensure fast execution. The `cutoff_frequency` can either be relative to the total number of documents if in the range `[0..1)` or absolute if greater or equal to `1.0`. Here is an example showing a query composed of stopwords exclusively: [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match" : { "message" : { "query" : "to be or not to be", "cutoff_frequency" : 0.001 } } } -------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT: The `cutoff_frequency` option operates on a per-shard-level. This means that when trying it out on test indexes with low document numbers you should follow the advice in {defguide}/relevance-is-broken.html[Relevance is broken]. [float] ===== phrase The `match_phrase` query analyzes the text and creates a `phrase` query out of the analyzed text. For example: [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match_phrase" : { "message" : "this is a test" } } -------------------------------------------------- Since `match_phrase` is only a `type` of a `match` query, it can also be used in the following manner: [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match" : { "message" : { "query" : "this is a test", "type" : "phrase" } } } -------------------------------------------------- A phrase query matches terms up to a configurable `slop` (which defaults to 0) in any order. Transposed terms have a slop of 2. The `analyzer` can be set to control which analyzer will perform the analysis process on the text. It default to the field explicit mapping definition, or the default search analyzer, for example: [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match_phrase" : { "message" : { "query" : "this is a test", "analyzer" : "my_analyzer" } } } -------------------------------------------------- [float] ===== match_phrase_prefix The `match_phrase_prefix` is the same as `match_phrase`, except that it allows for prefix matches on the last term in the text. For example: [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match_phrase_prefix" : { "message" : "this is a test" } } -------------------------------------------------- Or: [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match" : { "message" : { "query" : "this is a test", "type" : "phrase_prefix" } } } -------------------------------------------------- It accepts the same parameters as the phrase type. In addition, it also accepts a `max_expansions` parameter that can control to how many prefixes the last term will be expanded. It is highly recommended to set it to an acceptable value to control the execution time of the query. For example: [source,js] -------------------------------------------------- { "match_phrase_prefix" : { "message" : { "query" : "this is a test", "max_expansions" : 10 } } } -------------------------------------------------- [float] ==== Comparison to query_string / field The match family of queries does not go through a "query parsing" process. It does not support field name prefixes, wildcard characters, or other "advanced" features. For this reason, chances of it failing are very small / non existent, and it provides an excellent behavior when it comes to just analyze and run that text as a query behavior (which is usually what a text search box does). Also, the `phrase_prefix` type can provide a great "as you type" behavior to automatically load search results. [float] ==== Other options * `lenient` - If set to true will cause format based failures (like providing text to a numeric field) to be ignored. Defaults to false.