# Return matches only for "prefix" query
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/return-matches-only-for-prefix-query/38741
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [January 8, 2016, 3:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/return-matches-only-for-prefix-query/38741 "2016-01-08T15:19:47Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Benjamin\_Gathmann](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Benjamin_Gathmann)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2016, 3:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/return-matches-only-for-prefix-query/38741/1 "2016-01-08T15:19:47Z")
I have documents that contain e.g. 100 or more different IP addresses, e.g. like this:
```
{"httpcalls": [
{"dstip":"192.199.2.103"},
{"dstip":"286.199.2.100"},
..... many more
]}
```
Now let's say I run a "prefix" query to look for IP addresses that start with "286.199", but I only want Elasticsearch to return the "dstip" entries that match.
Is there a way to achieve this?
From what I read so far, I understand that I can only choose between returning ALL "dstip" fields from the documents that matched, or none at all.
The first option means that I receive e.g. 10,000 matching documents with 200 IPs each, i.e. 2,000,000 "dstip" entries. Too much data for me 😉
---
### Author:  [@Benjamin\_Gathmann](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Benjamin_Gathmann)
#### Post date: [January 11, 2016, 3:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/return-matches-only-for-prefix-query/38741/2 "2016-01-11T15:08:04Z")
I saw that **inner hits** may be a partial solution for my problem:
[https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-request-inner-hits.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/search-request-inner-hits.html)
But if anybody else has advice, please let me know!
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 5, 2017, 11:25pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/return-matches-only-for-prefix-query/38741/3 "2017-07-05T23:25:24Z")