# Can i aggregate a nested field content?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-i-aggregate-a-nested-field-content/101709>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [September 25, 2017, 1:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-i-aggregate-a-nested-field-content/101709 "2017-09-25T13:34:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sharongur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7993a0/32.png) [@sharongur](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sharongur)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 1:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-i-aggregate-a-nested-field-content/101709/1 "2017-09-25T13:34:30Z")

</div>

Hi all!  
Im trying to do and aggregation of the values in a nested query, on an earlier query.

I managed to do the following:

> POST /flow\_test/sometest

> POST flow\_test/\_mapping/sometest  
> {  
> "properties": {  
> "cerdentials": {  
> "type": "nested",  
> "properties": {  
> "name": {  
> "type": "string"  
> }  
> }  
> },  
> "cookies": {  
> "type": "nested",  
> "properties": {  
> "name": {  
> "type": "string"  
> }  
> }  
> },  
> "files": {  
> "type": "nested",  
> "properties": {  
> "name": {  
> "type": "string"  
> }  
> }  
> },  
> "flow\_id": {  
> "type": "string"  
> }  
> }  
> }

now insert 2 docs ( or more )

> POST /flow\_test/sometest  
> {  
> "flow\_id":"something else",  
> "cookies":[{"name":"ck1"},{"name":"ck2"},{"name":"ck3"}],  
> "cerdentials":[{"name":"c1"},{"name":"c2"},{"name":"c3"}],  
> "files":[{"name":"f1"}, {"name":"f2"}, {"name":"f3"}]  
> }

now i want to first make a query to find all the documents that one of its nested field contains my variable ( we will try on cookies on this example)  
I manged to do it easily, but now i want to aggregate on these results, so i will see the following :

files:  
f1-2,  
f2-1  
cerdentials:  
c1-3,  
c3-1

this will represent how many documents has f1 on their nested files field in the result ( which already filtered the cookie).

The closest i got was counting the size of the nested field:

I did it like so :

> GET /flow\_test/sometest/\_search?pretty  
> {  
> "query":{  
> "bool": {  
> "must": [  
> {"match\_all": {}},  
> {  
> "nested":{  
> "path":"cookies",  
> "query":{  
> "bool":{  
> "must":[  
> {  
> "match":{  
> "cookies.name":"ck2"  
> }  
> }  
> ]  
> }  
> }  
> }  
> }  
> ]  
> }  
> },  
> "aggregations":{  
> "someAggregation":{  
> "nested":{  
> "path": "cerdentials"  
> },  
> "aggs":{  
> "cerdentialsCount":{  
> "cardinality":{  
> "field": "cerdentials.name"  
> }  
> }  
> }  
> }  
> }  
> }

I cant think of a way to preform this. my nested object might contain a complex object and not just name like in the example, so how will i compare the 2 to aggregate them ? is it even possible?

Im also very open to changing my document design, if necessary.

Thanks in advance!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sharongur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7993a0/32.png) [@sharongur](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sharongur)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2017, 6:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-i-aggregate-a-nested-field-content/101709/2 "2017-09-26T06:52:43Z")

</div>

Actually the question can be narrowed down to:  
Can i aggregate the content of a nested field?  
if i have 2 documents with nested field:  
nested: [{name: some name},{name:other name}]  
nested2:[{name:some name},{name:bla bla}]  
the result i want is 🙂  
some name - 2  
other name - 1  
bla bla - 1

Is it possible ? or for that particular scenario Elasticsearch is not the solution?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2017, 6:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/can-i-aggregate-a-nested-field-content/101709/3 "2017-10-24T06:52:56Z")

</div>

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