# Java API substring search query
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/java-api-substring-search-query/230808
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [May 2, 2020, 1:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/java-api-substring-search-query/230808 "2020-05-02T13:59:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@JavaDeveloper](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/JavaDeveloper)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2020, 1:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/java-api-substring-search-query/230808/1 "2020-05-02T13:59:17Z")
Hi everyone.
**Elasticsearch question about JAVA API:**
I have a string (36 characters) where **only last 8 characters are different** (other chars are prefix) and therefore I want to do search query over these last 8 characters **(elasticsearch must ignore the prefix in search time and look for the last chars only).**
I don't want to use "wildcard query" approach, because it slows down search.
what is the best way to do it?
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### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2020, 3:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/java-api-substring-search-query/230808/2 "2020-05-02T15:08:19Z")
It's not a question related to the java api but to elasticsearch.
It's better if you can extract the meaningful text at index time (index only the part you need).
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### Author:  [@JavaDeveloper](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/JavaDeveloper)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2020, 4:36pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/java-api-substring-search-query/230808/3 "2020-05-02T16:36:42Z")
Thank you Mr Pilato
I did same already.
But its possible sometimes user does not have access to the data at the indexing time and have to search on provided documents. so I think it should be better if a client API explicitly exist for this scenario.
Anyway, it seems that your solution is the best choice. 🙏
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2020, 4:36pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/java-api-substring-search-query/230808/4 "2020-05-30T16:36:45Z")
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