# Passing search\_after in URL as a query parameter

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/passing-search-after-in-url-as-a-query-parameter/361638>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [June 18, 2024, 11:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/passing-search-after-in-url-as-a-query-parameter/361638 "2024-06-18T11:22:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![aziubin](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/aziubin/32/135357_2.png) [@aziubin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/aziubin)\
**Post date:** [June 18, 2024, 11:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/passing-search-after-in-url-as-a-query-parameter/361638/1 "2024-06-18T11:22:52Z")

</div>

Hello!

Is it possible to pass the `search_after` parameter in URL of GET request somehow?

Currently I am using URL like this with body below to paginate big resultset (more than 10000 entries) using `search_after` parameter as described in [Paginate search results | Elasticsearch Guide [8.14] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/paginate-search-results.html):

```auto
/_search?q=target.type:dev&sort=target.raw&_source=target.raw&size=256
{
    "search_after": ["Mezhyrich"]
}

```

This works, but I would like to keep everything in URL avoiding passing body if possible, for example (note the `search_after` hypothetical query parameter at the beginning of the URL):

```auto
/_search?search_after:[Mezhyrich]&q=target.type:dev&sort=target.raw&_source=target.raw&size=256

```

which unfortunately does not work returning 400 Bad Request illegal\_argument\_exception request contains unrecognized parameter error, suggesting that Elasticsearch (7.10.2) does not recognize the `search_after` as a correct URL query parameter.

I reviewed [Lucene query syntax | Kibana Guide [8.14] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/current/lucene-query.html), and also [URI Search | Elasticsearch Guide [7.2] | Elastic](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/7.2/search-uri-request.html) but did not find a way to specify `search_after` parameter in URL.

Thank you in advance for your help.