Multi-match Query

The multi_match query builds on the match query to allow multi-field queries.

Common Parameters

• query

  (Required, string) The query string to evaluate.

• fields

  (Required, array of strings) The field names to query over. Fields can be boosted with the caret operator (^). Wildcards (*) are not supported.

• type

  (Optional, string) The way the multi_match query is executed internally depends on the type parameter. Defaults to best_fields.

Types of multi_match queries

best_fields (Default)

The best_fields type is most useful when you are searching for multiple words best found in the same field. For instance “brown fox” in a single field is more meaningful than “brown” in one field and “fox” in the other.

The best_fields type generates a match query for each field and wraps them in a dis_max query, to find the single best matching field.

best_fields supports the same parameters as the match query as well as tie_breaker.

Example

JSON

{
  "query": {
    "multi_match" : {
      "query":      "brown fox",
      "type":       "best_fields",
      "fields":     [ "subject", "message" ],
      "tie_breaker": 0.3
    }
  }
}

most_fields

The most_fields type is most useful when querying multiple fields that contain the same text analyzed in different ways. For instance, the main field may contain synonyms, stemming and terms without diacritics. A second field may contain the original terms, and a third field might contain shingles. By combining scores from all three fields we can match as many documents as possible with the main field, but use the second and third fields to push the most similar results to the top of the list.

most_fields supports the same parameters as the match query.

Example

JSON

{
  "query": {
    "multi_match" : {
      "query":      "quick brown fox",
      "type":       "most_fields",
      "fields":     [ "title", "title.original", "title.shingles" ]
    }
  }
}

Unsupported

The phrase, phrase_prefix, cross_fields, and bool_prefix types are not supported at this time.