# Best practices for executing user queries and reporting errors back to user **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [January 22, 2012, 5:28pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-practices-for-executing-user-queries-and-reporting-errors-back-to-user/6461 "2012-01-22T17:28:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mark\_Waddle](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/mark_waddle/32/2608_2.png) [@Mark\_Waddle](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mark_Waddle)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 5:28pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-practices-for-executing-user-queries-and-reporting-errors-back-to-user/6461/1 "2012-01-22T17:28:21Z")
Hello, I have an application that accepts complex queries from users and passes them straight to elastic search as query strings. Sometimes users write queries that cannot be parsed, and every shard reports an error. I am trying to distill these error messages down to the essence, such as, "cannot parse #$:@#$@#$", so that I can display an error message to the user, but I am finding that to be a difficult task. Does anyone have suggestions on how to parse the errors to present a user-readable error message? Or am I going about this all the wrong way? Should I be filtering my queries before sending them to ES? Should I be using a different query parser? Something else? Any help is appreciated. Thanks! Mark ---
**Author:** ![Lukas\_Vlcek1](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/lukas_vlcek1/32/819_2.png) [@Lukas\_Vlcek1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Lukas_Vlcek1)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 8:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-practices-for-executing-user-queries-and-reporting-errors-back-to-user/6461/2 "2012-01-22T20:07:10Z")
Hi, that sounds like a difficult situation to me. You are not responsible for query creation but you want to validate it and if there are any errors you want to report them back in "human readable form". In other words you are in the middle of the chain and you control neither input query string nor the parsing process (which happens in elasticsearch and error messages can be subject to change with new release). However, you can try to check if the input is valid JSON prior hitting ES (for example using Jackson library). If it is a valid JSON and you can get any general query then you can not do a lot more (there is no formal grammar for ES queries). May be you can also consider rebuilding the query from given JSON into new query using ES Java API. This could minimize chance of input user query errors. But generally parsing ES errors is IMO too complex. Regards, Lukas On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 6:28 PM, Mark Waddle [mark@markwaddle.com](mailto:mark@markwaddle.com) wrote: > Hello, > > I have an application that accepts complex queries from users and passes > them straight to Elasticsearch as query strings. Sometimes users write > queries that cannot be parsed, and every shard reports an error. I am > trying to distill these error messages down to the essence, such as, > "cannot parse #$:@#$@#$", so that I can display an error message to the > user, but I am finding that to be a difficult task. Does anyone have > suggestions on how to parse the errors to present a user-readable error > message? > > Or am I going about this all the wrong way? Should I be filtering my > queries before sending them to ES? Should I be using a different query > parser? Something else? > > Any help is appreciated. Thanks! > > Mark ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Waddle](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/mark_waddle/32/2608_2.png) [@Mark\_Waddle](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mark_Waddle)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2012, 8:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-practices-for-executing-user-queries-and-reporting-errors-back-to-user/6461/3 "2012-01-22T20:55:14Z")
Thanks Lukas. To clarify, the user is providing a Lucene format query string, not a JSON format. I have used the javascript Lucene query validator in the past, but it has some bugs. I was hoping someone else had a more robust solution. Or had a recommendation for a better way to support complex queries from power users. Thanks, Mark ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:41am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/best-practices-for-executing-user-queries-and-reporting-errors-back-to-user/6461/4 "2017-07-06T03:41:52Z")