# Like query \*string\* **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [September 26, 2018, 9:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971 "2018-09-26T09:40:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ashishtiwari1993](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ashishtiwari1993/32/135241_2.png) [@ashishtiwari1993](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ashishtiwari1993)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 9:40am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/1 "2018-09-26T09:40:00Z")
Hi guys, Specification: Elasticsearch version : 6.2.2 I have data which having "emailaddress" field. Suppose my one of the value is "user@example.com". I might have search input like "@exam", "user@" , "user", ".com" etc. I have tried to achieve this using query\_string with \*\* pattern match. I got appropriate result but It seems, it is slow. I also cannot use uax\_url\_email tokenizer because user is free to give any input. I have used default standard tokenizer. With this, suppose i have two email address "user@example.com" and "example@user.com". If i am searching with "user@", It is showing both result. Which is not my output. Is there any specific tokenizer or method by which i can achieve my output. It should be same as like mysql's like query with %@user%. After this i used edge\_ngram tokenizer which gives me partially better output. Below is my analyzer: ``` "analysis":{ "filter":{ "emailtoken":{ "type":"edge_ngram", "min_gram":1, "max_gram":255, "token_chars":[ "letter", "digit", "symbol", "punctuation" ] } }, "analyzer":{ "email":{ "type":"custom", "tokenizer":"standard", "filter":[ "lowercase", "emailtoken" ] } } } } ``` With this, Suppose i have email address like "name.sirname@example.com", So above anlyzer also got failed with the search of ".sirname" or "@example". Thanks ---
**Author:** ![fkelbert](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/fkelbert/32/35762_2.png) [@fkelbert](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/fkelbert)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 9:48am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/2 "2018-09-26T09:48:00Z")
Hi @ashishtiwari1993, As you described, \*\* does work, but gives poor performance. This is due to how Elasticsearch indexes its documents internally. Another approach is to index your strings multiple times (using [fields](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/multi-fields.html)) using different [custom analyzers](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis-custom-analyzer.html). In particular, you might want to look into the [NGram tokenizer](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis-ngram-tokenizer.html). You might then also want to consider combining NGrams with a [prefix query](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-prefix-query.html). ---
**Author:** ![ashishtiwari1993](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ashishtiwari1993/32/135241_2.png) [@ashishtiwari1993](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ashishtiwari1993)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 9:52am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/3 "2018-09-26T09:52:52Z")
@fkelbert Thanks for quick prompt. I have edit my question forgot to mention about edge\_ngram tokenizer. In edge\_ngram i am facing issue with special chars like ".", "@". ---
**Author:** ![fkelbert](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/fkelbert/32/35762_2.png) [@fkelbert](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/fkelbert)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 9:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/4 "2018-09-26T09:55:11Z")
Hi @ashishtiwari1993, Consider using NGrams instead of Edge-NGrams . ---
**Author:** ![fkelbert](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/fkelbert/32/35762_2.png) [@fkelbert](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/fkelbert)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 9:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/5 "2018-09-26T09:56:56Z")
Further to that, you probably want to use the [`keyword` tokenizer](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/analysis-keyword-tokenizer.html), which does not actually tokenize the string (i.e., it is a noop and keeps the string as-is). ---
**Author:** ![ashishtiwari1993](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ashishtiwari1993/32/135241_2.png) [@ashishtiwari1993](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ashishtiwari1993)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 10:03am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/6 "2018-09-26T10:03:19Z")
@fkelbert Thats cool it wokrs 🙂 Thanks for quick help. Just one doubt, I am having lots of records which contains email address. Now ngram tokenizer is going to apply on each email address. Would it be cause and delay in write performance ? Because i have multiple fields, On which want to implement the same method . ---
**Author:** ![fkelbert](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/fkelbert/32/35762_2.png) [@fkelbert](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/fkelbert)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 10:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/7 "2018-09-26T10:07:41Z")
Great to hear 🙂 I'm afraid you'll need to experiment with performance. You can increase write throughput by configuring your index to use more primary shards. Out of curiosity: how much faster are the ngrams compared to the \*\* method for you? ---
**Author:** ![fkelbert](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/fkelbert/32/35762_2.png) [@fkelbert](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/fkelbert)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 10:12am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/8 "2018-09-26T10:12:41Z")
Another note: Think twice whether you _actually need_ this kind of method for many of your fields. For search, the "more standard" analyzers do a pretty good job in 95% of the use cases. ---
**Author:** ![ashishtiwari1993](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ashishtiwari1993/32/135241_2.png) [@ashishtiwari1993](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ashishtiwari1993)\ **Post date:** [September 26, 2018, 10:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/9 "2018-09-26T10:15:21Z")
Right now i am using same \*\*. Need to reindex the data to measure performance. But it will definitely faster than to regex, wildcard & \*\*. I will share my output here 🙂 . Thanks for the suggestion @fkelbert. Definitely i ll take care of use case. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2018, 10:15am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/like-query-string/149971/10 "2018-10-24T10:15:30Z")
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