# Fuzziness in query\_string

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-in-query-string/160711>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [December 13, 2018, 10:24am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-in-query-string/160711 "2018-12-13T10:24:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![roru](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/roru/32/38780_2.png) [@roru](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/roru)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 10:24am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-in-query-string/160711/1 "2018-12-13T10:24:03Z")

</div>

Hi all,

I am using **query\_string** for my queries, because I want the user to be able to use operators like AND and OR.

The problem is, that if a user searches for "nestle", he won't get any results, because it is actually written as "nestlé". So the search term has to be exactly "nestlé" and not "nestle".

So I thought I might add some fuzziness. Would you agree, or do you have a better solution for handling accents?

The problem with fuzziness is, that in query\_string the user must add the tide ~ himself after a word, but he doesn't know about it.

So I am looking for a way to automatically add a ~ after each token. Is this possible?

Best regards ,  
Roger

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![klof](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/klof/32/31590_2.png) [@klof](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/klof)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 12:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-in-query-string/160711/2 "2018-12-13T12:38:18Z")

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Hi,  
If your problem is just the "`nestlé`" use case, I think you don't need to use the fuzziness.

What you could do, is in your mapping to add the **ascii folding token filter** with the **preserve\_original** parameter equals true.  
In that case :  
`nestlé` will be indexed as `nestlé` and `nestle`

[https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis-asciifolding-tokenfilter.html#analysis-asciifolding-tokenfilter](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis-asciifolding-tokenfilter.html#analysis-asciifolding-tokenfilter)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![roru](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/roru/32/38780_2.png) [@roru](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/roru)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 1:32pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-in-query-string/160711/3 "2018-12-13T13:32:42Z")

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Thank you @klof for your answer.

The thing is, I am using elasticpress Wordpress plugin which has the settings/mappings part preset when i start the indexing process. I tried to "hack" the plugin, but it still does not work with "nestle".

I'm adding part of the mappings file from the plugin so you can see what i have added  
(see line 8 in analyzer=\>default=\>filter and further down in "filter" where i put my custom asciifolder filter)

have i done something wrong?

```
'settings' => array(
	'index.mapping.total_fields.limit' => apply_filters( 'ep_total_field_limit', 5000 ),
	'index.max_result_window' => apply_filters( 'ep_max_result_window', 1000000 ),
	'analysis' => array(
		'analyzer' => array(
			'default' => array(
				'tokenizer' => 'standard',
				'filter' => array( 'standard', 'ewp_word_delimiter', 'lowercase', 'stop', 'ewp_snowball', 'my_ascii_folding' ),
				'char_filter' => array( 'html_strip' ),
				'language' => apply_filters( 'ep_analyzer_language', 'english', 'analyzer_default' ),
			),
			'shingle_analyzer' => array(
				'type' => 'custom',
				'tokenizer' => 'standard',
				'filter' => array( 'lowercase', 'shingle_filter' ),
			),
			'ewp_lowercase' => array(
				'type' => 'custom',
				'tokenizer' => 'keyword',
				'filter' => array( 'lowercase' ),
			),
		),
		'filter' => array(
            'my_ascii_folding' => array(
                "type" => "asciifolding",
                "preserve_original" => true,
            ),
			'shingle_filter' => array(
				'type' => 'shingle',
				'min_shingle_size' => 2,
				'max_shingle_size' => 5,
			),
			'ewp_word_delimiter' => array(
				'type' => 'word_delimiter',
				'preserve_original' => true,
			),
			'ewp_snowball' => array(
				'type' => 'snowball',
				'language' => apply_filters( 'ep_analyzer_language', 'english', 'filter_ewp_snowball' ),
			),
			'edge_ngram' => array(
				'side' => 'front',
				'max_gram' => 10,
				'min_gram' => 3,
				'type' => 'edgeNGram',
			),
		),
		'normalizer' => array(
			'lowerasciinormalizer' => array(
				'type' => 'custom',
				'filter' => array( 'lowercase', 'asciifolding' ),
			),
		),
	),
), 
[...]
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![roru](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/roru/32/38780_2.png) [@roru](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/roru)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2018, 2:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-in-query-string/160711/4 "2018-12-13T14:37:21Z")

</div>

I solved it by removing the Snowball Filter. After re-indexing, it works now. "nestle" will find articles with "nestlé".  
Don't know if this is the best solution though 🙂

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<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:** [January 10, 2019, 2:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/fuzziness-in-query-string/160711/5 "2019-01-10T14:37:38Z")

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