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Match Boolean prefix query

The match_bool_prefix query analyzes the provided search string and creates a Boolean query from the string’s terms. It uses every term except the last term as a whole word for matching. The last term is used as a prefix. The match_bool_prefix query returns documents that contain either the whole-word terms or terms that start with the prefix term, in any order.

The following example shows a basic match_bool_prefix query:

GET _search
{
  "query": {
    "match_bool_prefix": {
      "title": "the wind"
    }
  }
}

To pass additional parameters, you can use the expanded syntax:

GET _search
{
  "query": {
    "match_bool_prefix": {
      "title": {
        "query": "the wind",
        "analyzer": "stop"
      }
    }
  }
}

Example

For example, consider an index with the following documents:

PUT testindex/_doc/1
{
  "title": "The wind rises"
}

PUT testindex/_doc/2
{
  "title": "Gone with the wind"
  
}

The following match_bool_prefix query searches for the whole word rises and the words that start with wi, in any order:

GET testindex/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match_bool_prefix": {
      "title": "rises wi"
    }
  }
}

The preceding query is equivalent to the following Boolean query:

GET testindex/_search
{
  "query": {
    "bool" : {
      "should": [
        { "term": { "title": "rises" }},
        { "prefix": { "title": "wi"}}
      ]
    }
  }
}

The response contains both documents:

Response
{
  "took": 15,
  "timed_out": false,
  "_shards": {
    "total": 1,
    "successful": 1,
    "skipped": 0,
    "failed": 0
  },
  "hits": {
    "total": {
      "value": 2,
      "relation": "eq"
    },
    "max_score": 1.73617,
    "hits": [
      {
        "_index": "testindex",
        "_id": "1",
        "_score": 1.73617,
        "_source": {
          "title": "The wind rises"
        }
      },
      {
        "_index": "testindex",
        "_id": "2",
        "_score": 1,
        "_source": {
          "title": "Gone with the wind"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

The match_bool_prefix and match_phrase_prefix queries

The match_bool_prefix query matches terms in any position, while the match_phrase_prefix query matches terms as a whole phrase. To illustrate the difference, once again consider the match_bool_prefix query from the preceding section:

GET testindex/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match_bool_prefix": {
      "title": "rises wi"
    }
  }
}

Both The wind rises and Gone with the wind match the search terms, so the query returns both documents.

Now run a match_phrase_prefix query on the same index:

GET testindex/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match_phrase_prefix": {
      "title": "rises wi"
    }
  }
}

The response returns no documents because none of the documents contain a phrase rises wi in the specified order.

Analyzer

By default, when you run a query on a text field, the search text is analyzed using the index analyzer associated with the field. You can specify a different search analyzer in the analyzer parameter:

GET testindex/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match_bool_prefix": {
      "title": {
        "query": "rise the wi",
        "analyzer": "stop"
      }
    }
  }
}

Parameters

The query accepts the name of the field (<field>) as a top-level parameter:

GET _search
{
  "query": {
    "match_bool_prefix": {
      "<field>": {
        "query": "text to search for",
        ... 
      }
    }
  }
}

The <field> accepts the following parameters. All parameters except query are optional.

Parameter Data type Description
query String The text, number, Boolean value, or date to use for search. Required.
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.
fuzziness AUTO, 0, or a positive integer 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. The default, AUTO, chooses a value based on the length of each term and is a good choice for most use cases.
fuzzy_rewrite String Determines how OpenSearch rewrites the query. Valid values are constant_score, scoring_boolean, constant_score_boolean, top_terms_N, top_terms_boost_N, and top_terms_blended_freqs_N. If the fuzziness parameter is not 0, the query uses a fuzzy_rewrite method of top_terms_blended_freqs_${max_expansions} by default. Default is constant_score.
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.
max_expansions Positive integer The maximum number of terms to which the query can expand. Fuzzy queries “expand to” a number of matching terms that are within the distance specified in fuzziness. Then OpenSearch tries to match those terms. Default is 50.
minimum_should_match Positive or negative integer, positive or negative percentage, combination If the query string contains multiple search terms and you use 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. For details, see Minimum should match.
operator String If the query string contains multiple search terms, whether all terms need to match (and) or only one term needs to match (or) for a document to be considered a match. Valid values are or and and. Default is or.
prefix_length Non-negative integer The number of leading characters that are not considered in fuzziness. Default is 0.

The fuzziness, fuzzy_transpositions, fuzzy_rewrite, max_expansions, and prefix_length parameters can be applied to the term subqueries constructed for all terms except the final term. They do not have any effect on the prefix query constructed for the final term.

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