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Elasticsearch search API for App Search (technical preview)

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Elasticsearch search API for App Search (technical preview)

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The Elasticsearch search API is a technical preview feature. Technical preview features are subject to change and are not covered by the support SLA of generally available (GA) features. Elastic plans to promote this feature to GA in a future release.

A Private API key is required to access this endpoint.

In addition, a feature flag should be set either in the configuration settings:

feature_flag.elasticsearch_search_api: true

or in an environment variable:

ELASTICSEARCH_SEARCH_API=true

By default, the API is disabled.

Submit an Elasticsearch search request to the document indices that power an App Search engine and retrieve the results.

You can use this API with regular engines and meta engines.

GET <enterprise-search-base-url>/api/as/v0/engines/<engine>/elasticsearch/_search
POST <enterprise-search-base-url>/api/as/v0/engines/<engine>/elasticsearch/_search

Path parameters

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enterprise-search-base-url (required)
The Enterprise Search base URL for the deployment.
engine (required)
The engine name.

Request body

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Request body has the following elements:

request

This is an object that contains the following properties:

request.body

JSON query to be sent directly to Elasticsearch.

request.query_params (optional)

A list of query parameters to be included in the request sent to Elasticsearch. Each parameter is an object with a key and a value.

The body contains the actual Elasticsearch query. The query can be written using any elements of the Elasticsearch Query DSL.

analytics.query (optional)

Specify the search query associated with this request when recording search analytics.

analytics.tags (optional)

See Search API analytics tags.

Query analytics are recorded only if something is specified in analytics params.

Response body

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Response is returned directly from Elasticsearch and depends on the provided request and its parameters. Unlike the Search endpoint, this endpoint does not do any parsing or formatting of the Elasticsearch response, it simply passes the response back as-is.

Examples

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Retrieve all documents for a given engine:

curl --request "POST" \
--url "${ENTERPRISE_SEARCH_BASE_URL}/api/as/v0/engines/national-parks-demo/elasticsearch/_search" \
--header "Content-Type: application/json" \
--header "Authorization: Bearer private-g6673wmo7529rmvk7ckry530" \
--data '{
    "request": {
      "body": {"query": {"match_all": {}}}
    }
}'

Response (10 documents are returned, but only 1 is shown here):

{
  "took": 2,
  "timed_out": false,
  "_shards": {
    "total": 2,
    "successful": 2,
    "skipped": 0,
    "failed": 0
  },
  "hits": {
    "total": {
      "value": 59,
      "relation": "eq"
    },
    "max_score": 1.0,
    "hits": [
      {
        "_index": ".ent-search-engine-documents-national-parks-demo",
        "_id": "park_acadia",
        "_score": 1.0,
        "_ignored": [
          "description.date",
          "title.float",
          "date_established.location",
          "acres.location",
          "nps_link.date",
          "world_heritage_site.float",
          "acres.date",
          "states.float",
          "title.location",
          "states.location",
          "visitors.date",
          "location.float",
          "world_heritage_site.date",
          "description.float",
          "description.location",
          "nps_link.float",
          "square_km.location",
          "title.date",
          "location.date",
          "nps_link.location",
          "world_heritage_site.location",
          "states.date",
          "square_km.date",
          "date_established.float"
        ],
        "_source": {
          "description": "Covering most of Mount Desert Island and other coastal islands, Acadia features the tallest mountain on the Atlantic coast of the United States, granite peaks, ocean shoreline, woodlands, and lakes. There are freshwater, estuary, forest, and intertidal habitats.",
          "nps_link": "https://www.nps.gov/acad/index.htm",
          "states": [
            "Maine"
          ],
          "title": "Acadia",
          "visitors": "3303393",
          "world_heritage_site": "false",
          "location": "44.35,-68.21",
          "acres": "49057.36",
          "square_km": "198.5",
          "date_established": "1919-02-26T06:00:00Z",
          "id": "park_acadia"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

By default, Elasticsearch returns 10 documents, unless the size parameter is specified. We can provide the parameter in query_params. Request:

curl --request "POST" \
--url "${ENTERPRISE_SEARCH_BASE_URL}/api/as/v0/engines/national-parks-demo/elasticsearch/_search" \
--header "Content-Type: application/json" \
--header "Authorization: Bearer private-g6673wmo7529rmvk7ckry530" \
--data '{
    "request": {
      "body": {"query": {"match_all": {}}},
      "query_params": [
        {"key": "size", "value": "1"}
      ]
    }
}'

Response:

{
  "took": 0,
  "timed_out": false,
  "_shards": {
    "total": 2,
    "successful": 2,
    "skipped": 0,
    "failed": 0
  },
  "hits": {
    "total": {
      "value": 59,
      "relation": "eq"
    },
    "max_score": 1.0,
    "hits": [
      {
        "_index": ".ent-search-engine-documents-national-parks-demo",
        "_id": "park_acadia",
        "_score": 1.0,
        "_ignored": [
          "description.date",
          "title.float",
          "date_established.location",
          "acres.location",
          "nps_link.date",
          "world_heritage_site.float",
          "acres.date",
          "states.float",
          "title.location",
          "states.location",
          "visitors.date",
          "location.float",
          "world_heritage_site.date",
          "description.float",
          "description.location",
          "nps_link.float",
          "square_km.location",
          "title.date",
          "location.date",
          "nps_link.location",
          "world_heritage_site.location",
          "states.date",
          "square_km.date",
          "date_established.float"
        ],
        "_source": {
          "description": "Covering most of Mount Desert Island and other coastal islands, Acadia features the tallest mountain on the Atlantic coast of the United States, granite peaks, ocean shoreline, woodlands, and lakes. There are freshwater, estuary, forest, and intertidal habitats.",
          "nps_link": "https://www.nps.gov/acad/index.htm",
          "states": [
            "Maine"
          ],
          "title": "Acadia",
          "visitors": "3303393",
          "world_heritage_site": "false",
          "location": "44.35,-68.21",
          "acres": "49057.36",
          "square_km": "198.5",
          "date_established": "1919-02-26T06:00:00Z",
          "id": "park_acadia"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

For more guidance and examples, please see the Elasticsearch search guide.

Limitations

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This API only exposes the Elasticsearch Search API. It’s currently not possible to access other Elasticsearch search APIs, such as Multi search API, Scroll API, Async search API, etc.

See also

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You can see exactly how App Search searches for the documents if you use the related Search Explain API endpoint. That endpoint will build and return an Elasticsearch search query being used by App Search. The query can be used as a starting point to create your own queries.

More examples are available in the Elasticsearch search guide.

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