# Need advice for my term completion feature **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [March 7, 2016, 5:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-advice-for-my-term-completion-feature/43683 "2016-03-07T17:16:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![basiclaser](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/basiclaser/32/23304_2.png) [@basiclaser](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/basiclaser)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2016, 5:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-advice-for-my-term-completion-feature/43683/1 "2016-03-07T17:16:12Z")
I have a website with a searchbar where users can search for documents. Currently I am using a term suggester ( [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-suggesters-term.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-suggesters-term.html) ) to provide word suggestions to people as they type their queries. This approach is 99% perfect, except that I want a greater edit distance / Levenstein distance for the suggestions. It seems the maximum `max_edits` is set to 2, which AFAIK means that if a user is typing 'subspace', they have to type 'subspa' before they get a matching suggestion. I would prefer it is the matching suggestion was available after only 3-4 characters were typed eg.'subs'. It seems this is a limitation within term suggester. Is there any way of circumventing this and increasing the edit distance, or switching the suggester to prefix functionality? I am considering other methods such as prefix-filters ( [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/1.4/query-dsl-prefix-filter.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/1.4/query-dsl-prefix-filter.html) ) . Is it possible to use prefix-filters and extract and return only the matching terms, not the whole matching documents? Thanks for your help. ---
**Author:** ![msimos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@msimos](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/msimos)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2016, 10:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-advice-for-my-term-completion-feature/43683/2 "2016-03-07T22:30:21Z")
Hi, Have you seen these two examples in the definitive guide: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/\_query\_time\_search\_as\_you\_type.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/_query_time_search_as_you_type.html) [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/\_index\_time\_search\_as\_you\_type.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/_index_time_search_as_you_type.html) Take a look at these as they may help. Probably the second example using edge\_ngram will work best. ---
**Author:** ![basiclaser](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/basiclaser/32/23304_2.png) [@basiclaser](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/basiclaser)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2016, 10:26am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-advice-for-my-term-completion-feature/43683/3 "2016-03-08T10:26:16Z")
Msimos thanks for helping. My issue with this is that I just want the **_matching terms_** to be returned, not the **_documents_** containing the matching terms. So if i query 'sub', i want 'subspace', 'substring', 'subzero' to be returned. Is there a way to do this with queries? ---
**Author:** ![basiclaser](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/basiclaser/32/23304_2.png) [@basiclaser](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/basiclaser)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2016, 12:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-advice-for-my-term-completion-feature/43683/4 "2016-03-08T12:24:20Z")
My issue is that _term suggester_ has a limit of **2 edit distance**. Could I solve this problem by adding edge Ngrams to the field which i want to perform autocompletions on? ---
**Author:** ![msimos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@msimos](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/msimos)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2016, 5:33pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-advice-for-my-term-completion-feature/43683/5 "2016-03-08T17:33:50Z")
Hi, If there is a specific field you are using autocomplete for, then you can use the "fields" directive to just return that field and not the whole document. Like: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-request-fields.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-request-fields.html) ```auto GET /my_index/my_type/_search { "fields": ["name"], "query": { "match": { "name": "yel" } } } ``` Which will just return: ```auto "fields": { "name": [ "Yellow furballs" ] } ``` So at index time, you can add a list of terms into your documents which you can use for autocomplete. Or you can use any existing fields in your documents like title, city or whatever makes sense. Here's a useful comparison of the different autosuggest methods: [http://techblog.realestate.com.au/implementing-autosuggest-in-elasticsearch/](http://techblog.realestate.com.au/implementing-autosuggest-in-elasticsearch/) ---
**Author:** ![msimos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@msimos](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/msimos)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-advice-for-my-term-completion-feature/43683/6 "2016-03-08T17:50:37Z")
One last thing, you can also use the highlighter to get the term like this: ```auto GET /my_index/my_type/_search { "fields": ["name"], "query": { "match": { "name": "yel" } }, "highlight": { "fields": { "name": {} } } } ``` ```auto "hits": [ { "_index": "my_index", "_type": "my_type", "_id": "2", "_score": 0.625, "fields": { "name": [ "Yellow furballs" ] }, "highlight": { "name": [ "Yellow furballs" ] } } ``` Then you need to parse out the term(s) which have been highlighted. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2017, 11:10pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/need-advice-for-my-term-completion-feature/43683/7 "2017-07-05T23:10:15Z")