Elasticsearch array property must contain given array items

Question

I have documents that look like:

{
    \"tags\" => [
        \"tag1\",
        \"tag2\",
    ],
    \"name\" => \"Example 1\"
}

{
    \"tags\" => [         


        

Answer 1

You need to set the execution mode to "and" by adding "execution": "and" to the terms filter so that all terms must be contained within a document to be considered a match

GET _search
{
   "query": {
      "filtered": {
         "query": {
            "match_all": {}
         },
         "filter": {
            "terms": {
               "tags": [
                  "tag1",
                  "tag3"
               ],
               "execution": "and"
            }
         }
      }
   }
}

This is effectively the same as building a bool must filter with the conjunction of all terms, but in a more compact form.

Answer 2

You can set minimum_should_match to match your array:

{
    "query": {
        "filtered": {
           "query": {
               "match_all": {}
           },
           "filter": {
               "bool": {
                   "must": [
                      {
                          "terms": {
                             "tags": ["tag1","tag3"],
                             "minimum_should_match": 2
                          }
                      }
                   ]
               }
           }
       }
    }
}

Answer 3

For those who are looking at this in 2020, you might have noticed that minimum_should_match is deprecated long back.

There is an alternative currently available, which is to use terms_set.

For eg:

{
  "query": {
    "terms_set": {
      "programming_languages": {
        "terms": [ "c++", "java", "php" ],
        "minimum_should_match_field": "required_matches"
      }
    }
  }
}

The above example assumes a field required_matches exists which contains an integer, that defines how many matches should be there.

What is more useful is the alternative field minimum_should_match_script.

See the example below:

{
  "query": {
    "terms_set": {
      "programming_languages": {
        "terms": [ "c++", "java", "php" ],
        "minimum_should_match_script": {
          "source": "2"
        },
      }
    }
  }
}

You can always use the inside a filter context to make it works a filter.

Read more here