# How to tell the "exists"-query to include empty fields
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-tell-the-exists-query-to-include-empty-fields/163221
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [January 7, 2019, 2:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-tell-the-exists-query-to-include-empty-fields/163221 "2019-01-07T14:21:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@cherry-wave](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/cherry-wave)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2019, 2:21pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-tell-the-exists-query-to-include-empty-fields/163221/1 "2019-01-07T14:21:18Z")
Hello =)
I am using elastic search in version 5.6.4 and want to find entries where a field "tags" is existent. One rule of this query is "At least one non- `null` value is required." However, I want to treat empty fields as existent too. Here is a tiny example:
```
DELETE days
POST days/day
{
"name": "monday"
}
POST days/day
{
"tags": []
}
POST days/day
{
"tags": [""]
}
POST days/day
{
"tags": ["sunny"]
}
GET days/_search
{
"query": {
"exists": {
"field": "tags"
}
}
}
```
So basically I want to find all entries except the first one, where this field is really not there.
Is there another query to achieve this? Because I find it a bit odd to have empty strings as placeholders.
---
### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2019, 2:42pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-tell-the-exists-query-to-include-empty-fields/163221/2 "2019-01-07T14:42:54Z")
My advice is to compute this at index time.
You can use an ingest Script for example and compute a isEmpty field which you can index within your document.
Or a tag\_size number field..
---
### Author:  [@cherry-wave](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/cherry-wave)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2019, 3:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-tell-the-exists-query-to-include-empty-fields/163221/3 "2019-01-07T15:07:13Z")
Thank you, I am always thinking too complicated. Your ideas led me to the following solution: I fill those fields by myself and on this spot, I add a boolean saying if this field exists or not, lol \>\_\> Silly me.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 4, 2019, 3:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-to-tell-the-exists-query-to-include-empty-fields/163221/4 "2019-02-04T15:07:27Z")
This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.