[[search-request-body]]
== Request Body Search

The search request can be executed with a search DSL, which includes the
<<query-dsl,Query DSL>>, within its body. Here is an
example:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
$ curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/twitter/tweet/_search' -d '{
    "query" : {
        "term" : { "user" : "kimchy" }
    }
}
'
--------------------------------------------------

And here is a sample response:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
{
    "_shards":{
        "total" : 5,
        "successful" : 5,
        "failed" : 0
    },
    "hits":{
        "total" : 1,
        "hits" : [
            {
                "_index" : "twitter",
                "_type" : "tweet",
                "_id" : "1",
                "_source" : {
                    "user" : "kimchy",
                    "postDate" : "2009-11-15T14:12:12",
                    "message" : "trying out Elasticsearch"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}
--------------------------------------------------

[float]
=== Parameters

[horizontal]
`timeout`::

    A search timeout, bounding the search request to be executed within the
    specified time value and bail with the hits accumulated up to that point
    when expired. Defaults to no timeout. See <<time-units>>.

`from`::

    To retrieve hits from a certain offset. Defaults to `0`.

`size`::

    The number of hits to return. Defaults to `10`. If you do not care about
    getting some hits back but only about the number of matches and/or
    aggregations, setting the value to `0` will help performance.

`search_type`::

    The type of the search operation to perform. Can be
    `dfs_query_then_fetch` or `query_then_fetch`.
    Defaults to `query_then_fetch`.
    See <<search-request-search-type,_Search Type_>> for more.

`request_cache`::

    Set to `true` or `false` to enable or disable the caching
    of search results for requests where `size` is 0, ie
    aggregations and suggestions (no top hits returned).
    See <<shard-request-cache>>.

`terminate_after`::

    The maximum number of documents to collect for each shard,
    upon reaching which the query execution will terminate early. If set, the
    response will have a boolean field `terminated_early` to indicate whether
    the query execution has actually terminated_early. Defaults to no
    terminate_after.


Out of the above, the `search_type` and the `request_cache` must be passed as
query-string parameters. The rest of the search request should be passed
within the body itself. The body content can also be passed as a REST
parameter named `source`.

Both HTTP GET and HTTP POST can be used to execute search with body. Since not
all clients support GET with body, POST is allowed as well.

[float]
=== Fast check for any matching docs

In case we only want to know if there are any documents matching a
specific query, we can set the `size` to `0` to indicate that we are not
interested in the search results. Also we can set `terminate_after` to `1`
to indicate that the query execution can be terminated whenever the first
matching document was found (per shard).

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
$ curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/_search?q=tag:wow&size=0&terminate_after=1'
--------------------------------------------------

The response will not contain any hits as the `size` was set to `0`. The
`hits.total` will be either equal to `0`, indicating that there were no
matching documents, or greater than `0` meaning that there were at least
as many documents matching the query when it was early terminated.
Also if the query was terminated early, the `terminated_early` flag will
be set to `true` in the response.

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
{
  "took": 3,
  "timed_out": false,
  "terminated_early": true,
  "_shards": {
    "total": 1,
    "successful": 1,
    "failed": 0
  },
  "hits": {
    "total": 1,
    "max_score": 0,
    "hits": []
  }
}
--------------------------------------------------


include::request/query.asciidoc[]

include::request/from-size.asciidoc[]

include::request/sort.asciidoc[]

include::request/source-filtering.asciidoc[]

include::request/fields.asciidoc[]

include::request/script-fields.asciidoc[]

include::request/fielddata-fields.asciidoc[]

include::request/post-filter.asciidoc[]

include::request/highlighting.asciidoc[]

include::request/rescore.asciidoc[]

include::request/search-type.asciidoc[]

include::request/scroll.asciidoc[]

include::request/preference.asciidoc[]

include::request/explain.asciidoc[]

include::request/version.asciidoc[]

include::request/index-boost.asciidoc[]

include::request/min-score.asciidoc[]

include::request/named-queries-and-filters.asciidoc[]

include::request/inner-hits.asciidoc[]

include::request/search-after.asciidoc[]