# Why doesn't simple\_query\_string accept a type parameter?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-doesnt-simple-query-string-accept-a-type-parameter/168745>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [February 17, 2019, 6:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-doesnt-simple-query-string-accept-a-type-parameter/168745 "2019-02-17T18:03:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sschick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc29f/32.png) [@sschick](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sschick)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2019, 6:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-doesnt-simple-query-string-accept-a-type-parameter/168745/1 "2019-02-17T18:03:25Z")

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Why does the `query_string` query allow use with `cross_fields` while the `simple_query_string` query does not? I need either to have access to `cross_fields` in `simple_query_string` or access to something like `flags` in `query_string`.

For more context, I'm working on implementing an end user facing search. It seems like `simple_query_string` is a gift, in that it gives us features like exact matching with quotes and negative matching, but allows us to disable some of the other features that could be expensive (regex) or use characters that end users expect to be interpreted literally (+ when searching for c++). However, the semantic that we want is for all of the parts of the users query to appear in some field. This seems to me to be exactly `default_operator: AND` with `type:cross_fields`, but type is not supported on `simple_query_string`. My first reaction was to retreat back to `query_string` and try to lock it down so that the more advanced features wouldn't come up, but `query_string` does not support `flags`, so I'm not sure how to do that.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2019, 6:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-doesnt-simple-query-string-accept-a-type-parameter/168745/2 "2019-03-17T18:03:31Z")

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Closed on March 17, 2019, 6:03pm UTC

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