Request Body Search

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The search request can be executed with a search DSL, which includes the Query DSL, within its body. Here is an example:

$ curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/twitter/tweet/_search' -d '{
    "query" : {
        "term" : { "user" : "kimchy" }
    }
}
'

And here is a sample response:

{
    "_shards":{
        "total" : 5,
        "successful" : 5,
        "failed" : 0
    },
    "hits":{
        "total" : 1,
        "hits" : [
            {
                "_index" : "twitter",
                "_type" : "tweet",
                "_id" : "1",
                "_source" : {
                    "user" : "kimchy",
                    "postDate" : "2009-11-15T14:12:12",
                    "message" : "trying out Elasticsearch"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

Parameters

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timeout

A search timeout, bounding the search request to be executed within the specified time value and bail with the hits accumulated up to that point when expired. Defaults to no timeout. See Time units.

from

The starting from index of the hits to return. Defaults to 0.

size

The number of hits to return. Defaults to 10.

search_type

The type of the search operation to perform. Can be dfs_query_then_fetch, dfs_query_and_fetch, query_then_fetch, query_and_fetch. Defaults to query_then_fetch. See Search Type for more.

query_cache

Set to true or false to enable or disable the caching of search results for requests where ?search_type=count, ie aggregations and suggestions. See Shard query cache.

terminate_after

[preview] This functionality is in technical preview and may be changed or removed in a future release. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but features in technical preview are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features. The maximum number of documents to collect for each shard, upon reaching which the query execution will terminate early. If set, the response will have a boolean field terminated_early to indicate whether the query execution has actually terminated_early. Defaults to no terminate_after.

Out of the above, the search_type and the query_cache must be passed as query-string parameters. The rest of the search request should be passed within the body itself. The body content can also be passed as a REST parameter named source.

Both HTTP GET and HTTP POST can be used to execute search with body. Since not all clients support GET with body, POST is allowed as well.