# Text query on multiple fields **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [March 14, 2012, 4:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/text-query-on-multiple-fields/7002 "2012-03-14T16:14:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jan\_Fiedler](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jan_fiedler/32/2518_2.png) [@Jan\_Fiedler](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Jan_Fiedler)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 4:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/text-query-on-multiple-fields/7002/1 "2012-03-14T16:14:36Z")
I used to use the 'query\_string' query type to run searches across multiple fields (via the build in dismax capability). However, the Lucene parsing of the query phrase causes more harm than good for me so I thought to move to the text query family (that would only analyze but not parse the search phrase). This works fine as long as I only have one field to search. In case of multiple fields things become difficult as the text query family is strictly single fielded. I understand that I would have to construct a boolean (and) query per term with a dismax per field to achieve what 'query\_string' is doing implicitly. However, this approach would require analyzing the search phrase (to get to its terms) _before_ I can construct the correct query. Doing this analyze would mean another roundtrip via the analyze API and I could not use the text query with the analyzed terms. This does not seem right. So my question is whether I am missing something or whether there is a certain mismatch in the capabilities of the text vs. query\_string API? Could the text query family be extended to support multiple fields ? ---
**Author:** ![Clinton\_Gormley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@Clinton\_Gormley](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Clinton_Gormley)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 4:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/text-query-on-multiple-fields/7002/2 "2012-03-14T16:38:14Z")
Hi Jan On Wed, 2012-03-14 at 09:14 -0700, Jan Fiedler wrote: > I used to use the 'query\_string' query type to run searches across > multiple fields (via the build in dismax capability). However, the > Lucene parsing of the query phrase causes more harm than good for me > so I thought to move to the text query family (that would only analyze > but not parse the search phrase). > > This works fine as long as I only have one field to search. In case of > multiple fields things become difficult as the text query family is > strictly single fielded. I understand that I would have to construct a > boolean (and) query per term with a dismax per field to achieve what > 'query\_string' is doing implicitly. However, this approach would > require analyzing the search phrase (to get to its terms) before I can > construct the correct query. Doing this analyze would mean another > roundtrip via the analyze API and I could not use the text query with > the analyzed terms. This does not seem right. Doesn't this do what you want? curl -XGET '[http://127.0.0.1:9200/\_all/\_search?pretty=1](http://127.0.0.1:9200/_all/_search?pretty=1)' -d ' { "query" : { "dis\_max" : { "queries" : [ { "text" : { "name" : "foo bar" } }, { "text" : { "title" : "foo bar" } } ] } } } ' clint ---
**Author:** ![Jan\_Fiedler](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jan_fiedler/32/2518_2.png) [@Jan\_Fiedler](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Jan_Fiedler)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 4:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/text-query-on-multiple-fields/7002/3 "2012-03-14T16:44:40Z")
Well, not sure. This would use the default operator of the text query (which is 'OR'). I have not tested it but I would assume I would end up hitting documents that only have one of the terms (in either name or title). What I need is documents that have both terms (i.e. 'foo' and 'bar') in either the 'name' or the 'title' field. > ---
**Author:** ![Clinton\_Gormley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@Clinton\_Gormley](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Clinton_Gormley)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 5:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/text-query-on-multiple-fields/7002/4 "2012-03-14T17:07:48Z")
On Wed, 2012-03-14 at 09:44 -0700, Jan Fiedler wrote: > Well, not sure. This would use the default operator of the text query > (which is 'OR'). I have not tested it but I would assume I would end > up hitting documents that only have one of the terms (in either name > or title). What I need is documents that have both terms (i.e. 'foo' > and 'bar') in either the 'name' or the 'title' field. 😉 curl -XGET '[http://127.0.0.1:9200/\_all/\_search?pretty=1](http://127.0.0.1:9200/_all/_search?pretty=1)' -d ' { "query" : { "dis\_max" : { "queries" : [ { "text" : { "name" : { "operator" : "and", "query" : "foo bar" } } }, { "text" : { "title" : { "operator" : "and", "query" : "foo bar" } } } ] } } } ' > ---
**Author:** ![Jan\_Fiedler](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jan_fiedler/32/2518_2.png) [@Jan\_Fiedler](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Jan_Fiedler)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2012, 6:57pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/text-query-on-multiple-fields/7002/5 "2012-03-14T18:57:17Z")
I am pretty sure this is still not what I need and what query\_string is providing. The query will now insist that both terms (i.e. 'foo' and 'bar') are present in a single field. It will not match documents that have 'foo' in the 'name' field and 'bar' in the 'title' field. This is what I tried to get at in my first post. You would need to parse the phrase 'foo bar' to get the terms such that you could build a bool (and) query per term with dis\_max queries over fields. I bet this is what the 'query\_string' is doing internally when mapping to Lucene. It is just missing for the text query (or the 'query\_string' should have a mode to disable parsing such that it only analyzes). ---
**Author:** ![Clinton\_Gormley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@Clinton\_Gormley](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Clinton_Gormley)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2012, 7:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/text-query-on-multiple-fields/7002/6 "2012-03-15T07:20:50Z")
On Wed, 2012-03-14 at 11:57 -0700, Jan Fiedler wrote: > I am pretty sure this is still not what I need and what query\_string > is providing. The query will now insist that both terms (i.e. 'foo' > and 'bar') are present in a single field. It will not match documents > that have 'foo' in the 'name' field and 'bar' in the 'title' field. > This is what I tried to get at in my first post. You would need to > parse the phrase 'foo bar' to get the terms such that you could build > a bool (and) query per term with dis\_max queries over fields. I bet > this is what the 'query\_string' is doing internally when mapping to > Lucene. It is just missing for the text query (or the 'query\_string' > should have a mode to disable parsing such that it only analyzes). OK, I misunderstood your previous email. It may just be easier to sanitise the user input and use the query string. This is what I do in my Perl module: [https://metacpan.org/module/ElasticSearch::Util#filter\_keywords-](https://metacpan.org/module/ElasticSearch::Util#filter_keywords-) #=================================== sub filter\_keywords { #=================================== local $\_ = shift; ``` s{[^[:alpha:][:digit:] \-+'"*@\._]+}{ }g; return '' unless /[[:alpha:][:digit:]]/; s/\s*\b(?:and|or|not)\b\s*/ /gi; # remove '-' that don't have spaces before them s/(? **Author:** ![kimchy](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/kimchy/32/44952_2.png) [@kimchy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kimchy)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2012, 5:13pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/text-query-on-multiple-fields/7002/7 "2012-03-16T17:13:17Z") The reason why its simpler to do this with the query\_string with multiple fields is because the query parser for query\_string already breaks the words by whitespace (to parse the relevant syntax), so effectively, its building the dis max around queries generated by that query\_string whitepsace tokenization (each one is also further analyzed). The text query simply takes the text and analyzes it, generating the relevant query. On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 8:57 PM, Jan Fiedler [fiedler.jan@gmail.com](mailto:fiedler.jan@gmail.com) wrote: > I am pretty sure this is still not what I need and what query\_string is > providing. The query will now insist that both terms (i.e. 'foo' and 'bar') > are present in a single field. It will not match documents that have 'foo' > in the 'name' field and 'bar' in the 'title' field. This is what I tried to > get at in my first post. You would need to parse the phrase 'foo bar' to > get the terms such that you could build a bool (and) query per term with > dis\_max queries over fields. I bet this is what the 'query\_string' is doing > internally when mapping to Lucene. It is just missing for the text query > (or the 'query\_string' should have a mode to disable parsing such that it > only analyzes). ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/text-query-on-multiple-fields/7002/8 "2017-07-06T03:35:53Z")