# Querying tokens at the same position

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/querying-tokens-at-the-same-position/125540>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [March 26, 2018, 5:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/querying-tokens-at-the-same-position/125540 "2018-03-26T05:07:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeko](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jeko/32/4861_2.png) [@jeko](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jeko)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2018, 5:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/querying-tokens-at-the-same-position/125540/1 "2018-03-26T05:07:47Z")

</div>

Hello,

I built a analyzer plugin that **tokenizes XML**. It generates **1 token per XML attribute** , all tokens for a XML node are set **at the same position**.

I need a clean way to search for XML node that have multiple criteria set (example: `<w a=1 b=2 c=3>` ⇒ I want to find all nodes that have `a=1` AND `b=2`.

I found a **ugly solution** by experimenting with the **span** API (setting `slop` to `-1`, see below). I wonder if I could find a better solution.

Now, in more details:

**POST /\_analyze**

```json
{"analyzer":"annotation", "text":"<w lemma=be>am</w>"}

```

Will output:

```json
{
  "tokens": [
    {
      "token": "am",
      "start_offset": 0,
      "end_offset": 18,
      "type": "word",
      "position": 0
    },
    {
      "token": "lemma=be",
      "start_offset": 0,
      "end_offset": 18,
      "type": "attr",
      "position": 0
    }
  ]
}

```

I need a way to retrieve the document if it contains a node with the word `am` which have the `lemma=be` attribute.

Note: `am` and `lemma=be` are at the same position.

I couldn't find how to achieve this with the query language, but got something working with the `span_near` API, which is kinda hacky: a secret recipe was to set `"slop"` to `-1` and `"in_order"` to `false`.

**GET /corpus/segment/\_search**

```json
{
    "query": {
        "span_near" : {
            "clauses" : [
                { "span_term" : { "sr": "am" } },
                { "span_term" : { "sr": "lemma=be" } }
            ],
            "slop" : -1,
            "in_order" : false
        }
    }
}

```

If anyone has experience and/or advices on how to achieve that more cleanly, it would be appreciated.

Thanks!  
JC

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2018, 5:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/querying-tokens-at-the-same-position/125540/2 "2018-04-23T05:07:56Z")

</div>

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