# Results with unique value in field?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/results-with-unique-value-in-field/78422
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [March 13, 2017, 10:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/results-with-unique-value-in-field/78422 "2017-03-13T22:11:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jaddison](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jaddison)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2017, 10:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/results-with-unique-value-in-field/78422/1 "2017-03-13T22:11:56Z")
Using ES 5.2. I've indexed activities (classes, local events, etc) that are put on by businesses. Along these lines:
```auto
{
"name": "Johnny's BBQ Fundraiser",
"price": "$15/plate",
"date": "2016-04-28 12:00:00",
"location": "City Hall",
"business": {
"id": 423,
"name": "Johnny's Smokey BBQ Restaurant"
}
}
```
There are many different businesses, and each business runs (owns) many different activities.
I want to query for results such that each result is from a unique `business.id`. How would I go about doing this?
Currently I'm inefficiently looping:
- query ES for 30 results (I'm only looking for 16)
- taking the first activity for each encountered `business.id`, temporarily store the encountered `business.id` in a list, skipping other activities in the loop with already encountered `business.id`s
- on the subsequent loops, I query for another 30 results excluding (via `bool` : `must_not` : `terms` filter) previously encountered `business.id`s from the list
This is terrible. The way our data is structured and how businesses interact with our site means that there are sometimes 5 or 6 loops, just to get 16 results unique by `business.id`.
There must be a better way.
---
### Author:  [@spinscale](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/spinscale)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2017, 10:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/results-with-unique-value-in-field/78422/2 "2017-03-13T22:52:46Z")
Hey,
not a hundred percent sure, if this is what you want, but I think the next minor version release (Elasticsearch 5.3) has exactly, what you are looking for. The feature is called field collapsing for search, see the docs
[https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.x/search-request-collapse.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.x/search-request-collapse.html)
--Alex
---
### Author:  [@jaddison](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jaddison)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2017, 11:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/results-with-unique-value-in-field/78422/3 "2017-03-13T23:08:33Z")
That is interesting - thanks Alexander.
I've been looking into Aggregations - specifically if I bucket by `business.id` and then have a top-hit agg with size=1... might this work for my scenario? It does mean I need to parse my data from aggregations rather than just 'normal' results (which is what I'd obviously prefer - and looks like `collapse` does).
**Edit** : In fact, I'd almost guess that is what `collapse` does, internally... if so, intriguing!
---
### Author:  [@spinscale](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/spinscale)
#### Post date: [March 13, 2017, 11:26pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/results-with-unique-value-in-field/78422/4 "2017-03-13T23:26:17Z")
Hey,
yes, that could be a valid workaround for now, but the new feature should be faster than aggs, if I recall correctly.
--Alex
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [April 10, 2017, 11:26pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/results-with-unique-value-in-field/78422/5 "2017-04-10T23:26:34Z")
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