# Make painless script conditional on presence of field

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-painless-script-conditional-on-presence-of-field/112904>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [December 21, 2017, 10:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-painless-script-conditional-on-presence-of-field/112904 "2017-12-21T22:43:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![tun0](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@tun0](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tun0)\
**Post date:** [December 21, 2017, 10:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-painless-script-conditional-on-presence-of-field/112904/1 "2017-12-21T22:43:01Z")

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I currently have the following painless script:

def m = /^(/[^/?&]+).+/.matcher(doc['request\_uri.keyword'].value); if ( m.matches() ) { return m.group(1) } else { return "" }

This works just fine, as long as request\_uri.keyword exists. And fails horribly when it doesn't exist.

I tried stuff like:

if (doc['request\_uri.keyword'] != null) { def m = /^(/[^/?&]+).+/.matcher(doc['request\_uri.keyword'].value); if ( m.matches() ) { return m.group(1) } else { return "" } }

But that doesn't appear to be helping either (various other variants won't even compile).

What would be the proper way to check if a field actually exists? This is on ES5.5 btw.

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**Author:** ![rjernst](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/rjernst/32/6363_2.png) [@rjernst](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rjernst)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2017, 8:02pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-painless-script-conditional-on-presence-of-field/112904/2 "2017-12-22T20:02:38Z")

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The `doc` variable is a java Map, so you can do `doc.containsKey('request_uri.keyword')`

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 19, 2018, 8:02pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/make-painless-script-conditional-on-presence-of-field/112904/3 "2018-01-19T20:02:41Z")

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Closed on January 19, 2018, 8:02pm UTC

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