# Totally lost, why won't simple queries work?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [February 23, 2017, 8:21am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169 "2017-02-23T08:21:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 13\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![coogle](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/coogle/32/15175_2.png) [@coogle](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/coogle)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 8:21am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/1 "2017-02-23T08:21:30Z")

</div>

Hello,

For some reason I cannot get a search on anything but \_all to work for my index. I currently have an index (mapping included) that is populated using the ingest attachment plugin. I am trying to search against a few specific fields using simple\_query\_string (specifically [document.name](http://document.name), [document.section.name](http://document.section.name), and document.section.content) but they just don't work.

First, my mapping:

```auto
{
  "fbs": {
    "mappings": {
      "institution": {
        "properties": {
          "document": {
            "type": "nested",
            "properties": {
              "expiration_date": {
                "type": "date"
              },
              "flags": {
                "type": "text",
                "norms": false
              },
              "id": {
                "type": "keyword"
              },
              "is_active": {
                "type": "boolean"
              },
              "is_current": {
                "type": "boolean"
              },
              "name": {
                "type": "text"
              },
              "section": {
                "type": "nested",
                "properties": {
                  "created_at": {
                    "type": "date"
                  },
                  "data": {
                    "type": "text",
                    "fields": {
                      "keyword": {
                        "type": "keyword",
                        "ignore_above": 256
                      }
                    }
                  },
                  "file": {
                    "type": "nested",
                    "properties": {
                      "author": {
                        "type": "text",
                        "fields": {
                          "keyword": {
                            "type": "keyword",
                            "ignore_above": 256
                          }
                        }
                      },
                      "content": {
                        "type": "text"
                      },
                      "content_length": {
                        "type": "long"
                      },
                      "content_type": {
                        "type": "text",
                        "fields": {
                          "keyword": {
                            "type": "keyword",
                            "ignore_above": 256
                          }
                        }
                      },
                      "date": {
                        "type": "date"
                      },
                      "language": {
                        "type": "text",
                        "fields": {
                          "keyword": {
                            "type": "keyword",
                            "ignore_above": 256
                          }
                        }
                      },
                      "title": {
                        "type": "text",
                        "fields": {
                          "keyword": {
                            "type": "keyword",
                            "ignore_above": 256
                          }
                        }
                      }
                    }
                  },
                  "filename": {
                    "type": "text",
                    "norms": false
                  },
                  "fingerprint": {
                    "type": "text",
                    "norms": false
                  },
                  "flags": {
                    "type": "text",
                    "norms": false
                  },
                  "id": {
                    "type": "keyword"
                  },
                  "is_active": {
                    "type": "boolean"
                  },
                  "name": {
                    "type": "text"
                  },
                  "updated_at": {
                    "type": "date"
                  }
                }
              },
              "start_date": {
                "type": "date"
              }
            }
          },
          "id": {
            "type": "keyword"
          },
          "name_en": {
            "type": "text",
            "norms": false
          },
          "name_fr": {
            "type": "text",
            "norms": false
          },
          "region_id": {
            "type": "keyword"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

```

Here's a document in my index:

```auto
{
  "_index": "fbs",
  "_type": "institution",
  "_id": "7691fcaa54659612b42b8a158d5d4b9e.pdf",
  "_version": 1,
  "found": true,
  "_source": {
    "name_fr": "Western University",
    "document": {
      "is_active": 1,
      "name": "Full-time Collective Agreement",
      "flags": "full-time",
      "section": {
        "filename": "7691fcaa54659612b42b8a158d5d4b9e.pdf",
        "is_active": 1,
        "file": {
          "date": "2005-03-17T18:16:19Z",
          "content_type": "application/pdf",
          "author": "TSm",
          "language": "en",
          "title": "Collective Agreement",
          "content": """<CONTENT OF PDF>
""",
          "content_length": 2791
        },
        "data": "<BASE 64 PDF>",
        "updated_at": "2017-02-23",
        "name": "Table of Contents",
        "flags": "full-time",
        "fingerprint": "a4ae893e292dd8a58e906eba7ddb8d70",
        "created_at": "2017-02-23",
        "id": 1
      },
      "id": 1,
      "is_current": 0,
      "expiration_date": "2006-06-30",
      "start_date": "2002-07-01"
    },
    "region_id": 2,
    "name_en": "Western University"
  }
}

```

If I perform this query, I get the result I want:

```auto
GET fbs/institution/_search
    "query": {
      "simple_query_string": {
        "query": "table",
        "fields": [
          "_all"  
        ]
      }
    }
}

```

If I perform this query, it fails -- when I try to explain why I get "no matching term"

```auto
GET fbs/institution/7691fcaa54659612b42b8a158d5d4b9e.pdf/_explain
{
    "query": {
      "simple_query_string": {
        "query": "table",
        "fields": [
          "document.section.name"  
        ]
      }
    }
}

{
  "_index": "fbs",
  "_type": "institution",
  "_id": "7691fcaa54659612b42b8a158d5d4b9e.pdf",
  "matched": false,
  "explanation": {
    "value": 0,
    "description": "Failure to meet condition(s) of required/prohibited clause(s)",
    "details": [
      {
        "value": 0,
        "description": "no match on required clause (document.section.name:table)",
        "details": [
          {
            "value": 0,
            "description": "no matching term",
            "details": []
          }
        ]
      },
...

```

So I'm positive I've done something very stupid here, but I can't for the life of me figure out what the hell I've done wrong. Anyone please point me in the right direction?!

John

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 9:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/2 "2017-02-23T09:14:25Z")

</div>

It's because you are using nested fields here which requires a specific way to query on them.

Look at [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.2/query-dsl-nested-query.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.2/query-dsl-nested-query.html)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![coogle](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/coogle/32/15175_2.png) [@coogle](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/coogle)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 4:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/3 "2017-02-23T16:44:12Z")

</div>

Thanks for getting back to me, but it still doesn't seem to work.. reading the docs it appears this query should return correctly with a hit does it not?

```auto
GET fbs/institution/_search
{
    "query": {
      "nested": {
        "path": "document",
        "query": {
          "term": {
            "document.section.name": "Table of Contents"
          }
        }
      }
    }
}

```

I've also tried document.section for the path with no luck.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 5:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/4 "2017-02-23T17:00:17Z")

</div>

But you have more than one level of nested here.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![coogle](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/coogle/32/15175_2.png) [@coogle](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/coogle)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 5:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/5 "2017-02-23T17:03:42Z")

</div>

Could you provide an example of what you mean of what should be a working query?

I've tried this as well to no avail, if that's what you're suggesting:

```auto
GET fbs/institution/_search
{
    "query": {
      "nested": {
        "path": "document",
        "query": {
          "nested": {
            "path": "document.section",
            "query": {
              "term": {
                 "document.section.name": "Table of Contents"
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
}

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 5:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/6 "2017-02-23T17:11:47Z")

</div>

> I've tried this as well to no avail, if that's what you're suggesting:

Yes that's what I'm suggesting.

Note that your are using a Term query on a text field which is analyzed.

`Table of Contents` can't match in such a case. `table` should I believe.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![coogle](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/coogle/32/15175_2.png) [@coogle](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/coogle)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 5:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/7 "2017-02-23T17:16:31Z")

</div>

And you were correct! Doh of course a literal wouldn't work on an analyzed field.

Thank you -- I'm starting to lose myself in the forrest here so I appreciate you pointing that out. Now that I have at least something working here, I can start playing with it and see where I get. If I have any more problems I'll ping but just having something actually working that makes sense helps a lot.

Out of curiosity, did this behavior change in a meaningful way? I literally had a different version of this without mappings (dynamic) where my queries worked fine without all this nested stuff so that's what was really throwing me off this time. I don't quite understand why one worked and the other didn't.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 5:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/8 "2017-02-23T17:40:51Z")

</div>

If you are using dynamic mappings, then your mapping does not have any `nested` objects.  
Just regular objects.

That's probably why it works in one case and not in the other one.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![coogle](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/coogle/32/15175_2.png) [@coogle](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/coogle)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 5:59pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/9 "2017-02-23T17:59:10Z")

</div>

Ah, makes sense.

If I could trouble you for one more question... Thanks to your help I've built my query and it all seems to be working exactly (at least for now) as I intended.

One last thing: In my old dynamic based mapping, I was doing an agg to return the total number of unique institutions returned in the results. This is in the mapping we're discussing done by counting the total unique \_source.id (not \_source.\_id) values we have in our search results. I tried just re-using what I had before that was working and adjusting the field names but it's not working any more... any thoughts?

```auto
    "aggs": {
        "total_institutions": {
            "cardinality": {
                "field": "id"
            }
        }
    }

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 9:57pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/10 "2017-02-23T21:57:36Z")

</div>

I don't see any `source.id` field in your mapping. What are you talking about? May be provide an example?

FWIW you can use copy\_to feature in the mapping to copy a nested value to a parent field so the aggregation will behave as it was previously?

My 2 cents

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![coogle](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/coogle/32/15175_2.png) [@coogle](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/coogle)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 10:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/11 "2017-02-23T22:01:51Z")

</div>

In the mapping there is this:

```auto
"id": {
            "type": "keyword"
          },
          "name_en": {
            "type": "text",
            "norms": false
          },

```

It's not clear in the mapping but the various 'id' fields are actually all different keys in a database I've included just so I can reference any section. But specifically the ID field above (which is top-level to the institution type) is what I used to count unique values of in an aggregation so I knew how many unique institutions were returned in the results. That's what isn't working anymore as it just returns 0 (although I would have expected it to return 1 since I did return one result)

Make more sense now?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)\
**Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 10:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/12 "2017-02-23T22:22:58Z")

</div>

I can see `id` but I can't see `source.id` in mapping or in the sample document.

---

<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:** [March 23, 2017, 10:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/totally-lost-why-wont-simple-queries-work/76169/13 "2017-03-23T22:23:26Z")

</div>

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