# Search arrays with arrays

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-arrays-with-arrays/259132>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [December 18, 2020, 6:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-arrays-with-arrays/259132 "2020-12-18T18:43:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Luca\_Frost](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/luca_frost/32/70254_2.png) [@Luca\_Frost](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Luca_Frost)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 6:43pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-arrays-with-arrays/259132/1 "2020-12-18T18:43:51Z")

</div>

Hi all,

I have an ES index where one of my mappings stores a simple array of named entities pre-set at the point of ingestion.

I'm trying to search my index using a given array of entities, to return documents where containing many of the same entities.

Some code for illustration...

```auto
GET /test_data/_search
{  
"query": {
    "match": {
      "entities": ['Trump', 'CNN', 'Oklahoma', 'Tiktok', 'Tulsa']
    }
  }
}

```

However, this returns a parse exception -- What would be the best method to search fields containing arrays using another array?

Thanks 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ylasri](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ylasri/32/86120_2.png) [@ylasri](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ylasri)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 6:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-arrays-with-arrays/259132/2 "2020-12-18T18:46:38Z")

</div>

May be a [terms](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-terms-query.html) query

```auto
GET test/_search
{
  "query": {
    "terms": {
      "addresses.city.keyword": ["Brussels"],
      "boost": 1.0
    }
  }
}

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Luca\_Frost](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/luca_frost/32/70254_2.png) [@Luca\_Frost](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Luca_Frost)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 6:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-arrays-with-arrays/259132/3 "2020-12-18T18:50:11Z")

</div>

Thanks for the quick response, I have tried a terms query, however, it returns zero responses when I know that there are documents that contain some/all of the terms provided -- this makes me think that terms provides only an exact match whereas I'm looking for a way to harness the score returned by ES to filter by similarity.

Any ideas? Sorry! 🙂 😃

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ylasri](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ylasri/32/86120_2.png) [@ylasri](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ylasri)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 6:55pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-arrays-with-arrays/259132/4 "2020-12-18T18:55:04Z")

</div>

Then 🙂

```auto
GET /test_data/_search
{  
"query": {
    "match": {
      "entities": "Trump CNN Oklahoma Tiktok Tulsa"
    }
  }
}

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Luca\_Frost](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/luca_frost/32/70254_2.png) [@Luca\_Frost](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Luca_Frost)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2020, 7:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-arrays-with-arrays/259132/5 "2020-12-18T19:07:32Z")

</div>

Perfect! Thank you so much! :))

---

<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:** [January 15, 2021, 7:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/search-arrays-with-arrays/259132/6 "2021-01-15T19:07:37Z")

</div>

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