# Highlighting a default\_field in a query

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/highlighting-a-default-field-in-a-query/6723>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [February 15, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/highlighting-a-default-field-in-a-query/6723 "2012-02-15T22:52:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![vinny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b9e5f3/32.png) [@vinny](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vinny)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2012, 10:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/highlighting-a-default-field-in-a-query/6723/1 "2012-02-15T22:52:42Z")

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I'm running into a problem with highlighting a field when I set it as the  
default\_field in my search query.

org.elasticsearch.search.fetch.FetchPhaseExecutionException:  
[4f3542202739100b22000002][3]: query[file\_path:\* text:vinny\*  
text:about],from[0],size[10],sort[,\<custom:"file\_id":  
org.elasticsearch.index.field.data.strings.StringFieldDataType$1@b4818\>]:  
Fetch Failed [Failed to highlight field [text]]  
at  
org.elasticsearch.search.highlight.HighlightPhase.hitExecute(HighlightPhase.java:210)  
at org.elasticsearch.search.fetch.FetchPhase.execute(FetchPhase.java:206)  
at  
org.elasticsearch.search.SearchService.executeFetchPhase(SearchService.java:434)  
at  
org.elasticsearch.search.action.SearchServiceTransportAction.sendExecuteFetch(SearchServiceTransportAction.java:314)  
at  
org.elasticsearch.action.search.type.TransportSearchQueryThenFetchAction$AsyncAction.executeFetch(TransportSearchQueryThenFetchAction.java:145)  
at  
org.elasticsearch.action.search.type.TransportSearchQueryThenFetchAction$AsyncAction$2.run(TransportSearchQueryThenFetchAction.java:132)  
at  
java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)  
at  
java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)

What is strange to me is that my original query I sent is  
"file\_path:_vinny_ OR about". This seems to cause issues because I set the  
default\_field to a field called "text". The output I get back shows that  
every word is being highlighted and I get the above exception. The  
exception seems to happen when it tries to highlight "text" that has a zero  
length.

This appears to be broken on 0.17.7 and 0.18.7.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![vinny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b9e5f3/32.png) [@vinny](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/vinny)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2012, 5:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/highlighting-a-default-field-in-a-query/6723/2 "2012-02-16T05:35:06Z")

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disregard, it was an issue with a fancy formatter for the query string. It  
was inserting an erroneous space which I just noticed causing the query to  
be tokenized in a way that I didn't want.

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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:** [July 6, 2017, 3:39am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/highlighting-a-default-field-in-a-query/6723/3 "2017-07-06T03:39:10Z")

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