# Does anyone know of a way to get elasticsearch to return a word count?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-anyone-know-of-a-way-to-get-elasticsearch-to-return-a-word-count/13913
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [October 10, 2013, 9:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-anyone-know-of-a-way-to-get-elasticsearch-to-return-a-word-count/13913 "2013-10-10T21:52:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@nik9000](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nik9000)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2013, 9:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-anyone-know-of-a-way-to-get-elasticsearch-to-return-a-word-count/13913/1 "2013-10-10T21:52:04Z")
It looks like my user interface returns a word count and it was sneakily
implemented by faulting text in from the database and running
str\_word\_count on it. I'd rather have elasticsearch calculate the number
of words in my text so I don't have to load to show search results. Does
anyone know a good way to do that? I assume it'd make more sense to store
the word count on index into another field and just fetch it.
Nik
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### Author:  [@simonw\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/simonw_2)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2013, 9:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-anyone-know-of-a-way-to-get-elasticsearch-to-return-a-word-count/13913/2 "2013-10-11T21:17:15Z")
can you go a bit more into detail here? are you asking for the frequency of
a word across the entire index or within a document? How do you need to
select words?
simon
On Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:52:04 PM UTC+2, Nikolas Everett wrote:
> It looks like my user interface returns a word count and it was sneakily
> implemented by faulting text in from the database and running
> str\_word\_count on it. I'd rather have elasticsearch calculate the number
> of words in my text so I don't have to load to show search results. Does
> anyone know a good way to do that? I assume it'd make more sense to store
> the word count on index into another field and just fetch it.
>
> Nik
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### Author:  [@nik9000](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/nik9000)
#### Post date: [October 11, 2013, 9:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-anyone-know-of-a-way-to-get-elasticsearch-to-return-a-word-count/13913/3 "2013-10-11T21:25:54Z")
Just the number of terms in some field in the document. It is is a field I both query and highlight. I'd be happy with something approximate. I saw today I might be able to do a bit of math on the field norm to get it.
Sent from my iPhone
> On Oct 11, 2013, at 5:17 PM, simonw [simon.willnauer@elasticsearch.com](mailto:simon.willnauer@elasticsearch.com) wrote:
>
> can you go a bit more into detail here? are you asking for the frequency of a word across the entire index or within a document? How do you need to select words?
>
> simon
>
> > On Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:52:04 PM UTC+2, Nikolas Everett wrote:
> > It looks like my user interface returns a word count and it was sneakily implemented by faulting text in from the database and running str\_word\_count on it. I'd rather have elasticsearch calculate the number of words in my text so I don't have to load to show search results. Does anyone know a good way to do that? I assume it'd make more sense to store the word count on index into another field and just fetch it.
> >
> > Nik
>
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### Author:  [@simonw\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/simonw_2)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2013, 5:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-anyone-know-of-a-way-to-get-elasticsearch-to-return-a-word-count/13913/4 "2013-10-13T17:14:58Z")
the field norm might help but it's hard to access and it's a 8bit float
value that includes the boosts so it might be quite lossy? What you could
do in master is using a TermVector and consume the field in the client
since it contains all terms for a field in a document.
On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:25:54 PM UTC+2, Nikolas Everett wrote:
> Just the number of terms in some field in the document. It is is a field I
> both query and highlight. I'd be happy with something approximate. I saw
> today I might be able to do a bit of math on the field norm to get it.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Oct 11, 2013, at 5:17 PM, simonw \<[simon.w...@elasticsearch.com](mailto:simon.w...@elasticsearch.com)\\>
> wrote:
>
> can you go a bit more into detail here? are you asking for the frequency
> of a word across the entire index or within a document? How do you need to
> select words?
>
> simon
>
> On Thursday, October 10, 2013 11:52:04 PM UTC+2, Nikolas Everett wrote:
>
> > It looks like my user interface returns a word count and it was sneakily
> > implemented by faulting text in from the database and running
> > str\_word\_count on it. I'd rather have elasticsearch calculate the number
> > of words in my text so I don't have to load to show search results. Does
> > anyone know a good way to do that? I assume it'd make more sense to store
> > the word count on index into another field and just fetch it.
> >
> > Nik
>
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 2:12am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/does-anyone-know-of-a-way-to-get-elasticsearch-to-return-a-word-count/13913/5 "2017-07-06T02:12:43Z")