Query string queries

A query_string query parses the query string based on the query_string syntax. It lets you create powerful yet concise queries that can incorporate wildcards and search multiple fields.

Example

The following query searches for the speaker KING in the play name that ends with well:

GET shakespeare/_search
{
 "query": {
    "query_string": {
      "query": "speaker:KING  AND play_name: *well"
    }
  }
}

Parameters

The following table lists the parameters that query_string query supports. All parameters except query are optional.

Parameter	Data type	Description
`query`	String	The query string to use for search. Required.
`fields`	String array	The list of fields to search (for example, `“fields”: [“title^4”, “description”]`). Supports wildcards.
`default_field`	String	The field in which to search if the field is not specified in the query string. Supports wildcards. Defaults to the value specified in the `index.query.default_field` index setting. By default, the `index.query.default_field` is , which means extract all fields eligible for term query and filter the metadata fields. The extracted fields are combined into a query if the `prefix` is not specified. Eligible fields do not include nested documents. Searching all eligible fields could be a resource-intensive operation. The `indices.query.bool.max_clause_count` search setting defines the maximum value for the product of the number of fields and the number of terms that can be queried at one time. The default value for `indices.query.bool.max_clause_count` is 4,096.
`allow_leading_wildcard`	Boolean	Specifies whether and `?` are allowed as first characters of a search term. Default is `true`.
`analyze_wildcard`	Boolean	Specifies whether OpenSearch should attempt to analyze wildcard terms. Default is `false`.
`analyzer`	String	The analyzer used to tokenize the query string text. Default is the index-time analyzer specified for the `default_field`. If no analyzer is specified for the `default_field`, the `analyzer` is the default analyzer for the index.
`quote_analyzer`	String	The analyzer used to tokenize quoted text in the query string. Overrides the `analyzer` parameter for quoted text. Default is the `search_quote_analyzer` specified for the `default_field`.
`quote_field_suffix`	String	This option lets you search for exact matches (surrounded with quotation marks) using a different analysis method than non-exact matches use. For example, if `quote_field_suffix` is `.exact` and you search for `\”lightly\”` in the `title` field, OpenSearch searches for the word `lightly` in the `title.exact` field. This second field might use a different type (for example, `keyword` rather than `text`) or a different analyzer.
`phrase_slop`	Integer	The maximum number of words that are allowed between the matched words. If `phrase_slop` is 2, a maximum of two words is allowed between matched words in a phrase. Transposed words have a slop of 2. Default is 0 (an exact phrase match where matched words must be next to each other).
`minimum_should_match`	Positive or negative integer, positive or negative percentage, combination	If the query string contains multiple search terms and you used the `or` operator, the number of terms that need to match for the document to be considered a match. For example, if `minimum_should_match` is 2, “wind often rising” does not match “The Wind Rises.” If `minimum_should_match` is 1, it matches.
`rewrite`	String	Determines how OpenSearch rewrites and scores multi-term queries. Valid values are `constant_score`, `scoring_boolean`, `constant_score_boolean`, `top_terms_N`, `top_terms_boost_N`, and `top_terms_blended_freqs_N`. Default is `constant_score`.
`auto_generate_synonyms_phrase_query`	Boolean	Specifies whether to create match queries automatically for multi-term synonyms. Default is `true`.
`boost`	Floating-point	Boosts the clause by the given multiplier. Values less than 1.0 decrease relevance, and values greater than 1.0 increase relevance. Default is 1.0.
`default_operator`	String	The default Boolean operator used if no operators are specified. Valid values are: - `OR`: The string `to be` is interpreted as `to OR be` - `AND`: The string `to be` is interpreted as `to AND be` Default is `OR`.
`enable_position_increments`	Boolean	When true, resulting queries are aware of position increments. This setting is useful when the removal of stop words leaves an unwanted “gap” between terms. Default is `true`.
`fuzziness`	String	The number of character edits (insert, delete, substitute) that it takes to change one word to another when determining whether a term matched a value. For example, the distance between `wined` and `wind` is 1. Valid values are non-negative integers or `AUTO`. The default, `AUTO`, chooses a value based on the length of each term and is a good choice for most use cases.
`fuzzy_transpositions`	Boolean	Setting `fuzzy_transpositions` to `true` (default) adds swaps of adjacent characters to the insert, delete, and substitute operations of the `fuzziness` option. For example, the distance between `wind` and `wnid` is 1 if `fuzzy_transpositions` is true (swap “n” and “i”) and 2 if it is false (delete “n”, insert “n”). If `fuzzy_transpositions` is false, `rewind` and `wnid` have the same distance (2) from `wind`, despite the more human-centric opinion that `wnid` is an obvious typo. The default is a good choice for most use cases.
`fuzzy_max_expansions`	Positive integer	The maximum number of terms the fuzzy query will match. Default is 50.
`lenient`	Boolean	Setting `lenient` to true lets you ignore data type mismatches between the query and the document field. For example, a query string of “8.2” could match a field of type `float`. Default is `false`.
`max_determinized_states`	Positive integer	The maximum number of “states” (a measure of complexity) that Lucene can create for query strings that contain regular expressions (for example, `“query”: “/wind.+?/“`). Larger numbers allow for queries that use more memory. Default is 10,000.
`time_zone`	String	Specifies the number of hours to offset the desired time zone from `UTC`. You need to indicate the time zone offset number if the query string contains a date range. For example, set `time_zone”: “-08:00”` for a query with a date range such as `“query”: “wind rises release_date[2012-01-01 TO 2014-01-01]”`). The default time zone format used to specify number of offset hours is `UTC`.