How to match on prefix in Elasticsearch

Question

let\'s say that in my elasticsearch index I have a field called \"dots\" which will contain a string of punctuation separated words (e.g. \"first.second.third\").

I

Answer 1

Elasticsearch has Path Hierarchy Tokenizer that was created exactly for such use case. Here is an example of how to set it for your index:

# Create a new index with custom path_hierarchy analyzer 
# See http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/index-modules/analysis/pathhierarchy-tokenizer.html
curl -XPUT "localhost:9200/prefix-test" -d '{
    "settings": {
        "analysis": {
            "analyzer": {
                "prefix-test-analyzer": {
                    "type": "custom",
                    "tokenizer": "prefix-test-tokenizer"
                }
            },
            "tokenizer": {
                "prefix-test-tokenizer": {
                    "type": "path_hierarchy",
                    "delimiter": "."
                }
            }
        }
    },
    "mappings": {
        "doc": {
            "properties": {
                "dots": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "analyzer": "prefix-test-analyzer",
                    //"index_analyzer": "prefix-test-analyzer", //deprecated
                    "search_analyzer": "keyword"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}'
echo
# Put some test data
curl -XPUT "localhost:9200/prefix-test/doc/1" -d '{"dots": "first.second.third"}'
curl -XPUT "localhost:9200/prefix-test/doc/2" -d '{"dots": "first.second.foo-bar"}'
curl -XPUT "localhost:9200/prefix-test/doc/3" -d '{"dots": "first.baz.something"}'
curl -XPOST "localhost:9200/prefix-test/_refresh"
echo
# Test searches. 
curl -XPOST "localhost:9200/prefix-test/doc/_search?pretty=true" -d '{
    "query": {
        "term": {
            "dots": "first"
        }
    }
}'
echo
curl -XPOST "localhost:9200/prefix-test/doc/_search?pretty=true" -d '{
    "query": {
        "term": {
            "dots": "first.second"
        }
    }
}'
echo
curl -XPOST "localhost:9200/prefix-test/doc/_search?pretty=true" -d '{
    "query": {
        "term": {
            "dots": "first.second.foo-bar"
        }
    }
}'
echo
curl -XPOST "localhost:9200/prefix-test/doc/_search?pretty=true&q=dots:first.second"
echo

Answer 2

Have a look at prefix queries.

$ curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/index/type/_search' -d '{
    "query" : {
        "prefix" : { "dots" : "first.second" }
    }
}'

Answer 3

You should use a commodin chars to make your query, something like this:

$ curl -XGET http://localhost:9200/myapp/index -d '{
    "dots": "first.second*"
}'

more examples about the syntax at: http://lucene.apache.org/core/old_versioned_docs/versions/2_9_1/queryparsersyntax.html

Answer 4

There is also a much easier way, as pointed out in elasticsearch documentation:

just use:

{
    "text_phrase_prefix" : {
        "fieldname" : "yourprefix"
    }
}

or since 0.19.9:

{
    "match_phrase_prefix" : {
        "fieldname" : "yourprefix"
    }
}

instead of:

{   
    "prefix" : { 
        "fieldname" : "yourprefix" 
}

Answer 5

I was looking for a similar solution - but matching only a prefix. I found @imtov's answer to get me almost there, but for one change - switching the analyzers around:

"mappings": {
    "doc": {
        "properties": {
            "dots": {
                "type": "string",
                "analyzer": "keyword",
                "search_analyzer": "prefix-test-analyzer"
            }
        }
    }
}

instead of

"mappings": {
    "doc": {
        "properties": {
            "dots": {
                "type": "string",
                "index_analyzer": "prefix-test-analyzer",
                "search_analyzer": "keyword"
            }
        }
    }
}

This way adding:

'{"dots": "first.second"}'
'{"dots": "first.third"}'

Will add only these full tokens, without storing first, second, third tokens.

Yet searching for either

first.second.anyotherstring
first.second

will correctly return only the first entry:

'{"dots": "first.second"}'

Not exactly what you asked for but somehow related, so I thought could help someone.