Highlighting

Allow to highlight search results on one or more fields. The implementation uses the either lucene fast-vector-highlighter or highlighter. The search request body:

{
    "query" : {...},
    "highlight" : {
        "fields" : {
            "content" : {}
        }
    }
}

In the above case, the content field will be highlighted for each search hit (there will be another element in each search hit, called highlight, which includes the highlighted fields and the highlighted fragments).

In order to perform highlighting, the actual content of the field is required. If the field in question is stored (has store set to yes in the mapping), it will be used, otherwise, the actual _source will be loaded and the relevant field will be extracted from it.

If no term_vector information is provided (by setting it to with_positions_offsets in the mapping), then the plain highlighter will be used. If it is provided, then the fast vector highlighter will be used. When term vectors are available, highlighting will be performed faster at the cost of bigger index size.

Here is an example of setting the content field to allow for highlighting on it (this will cause the index to be bigger):

{
    "type_name" : {
        "content" : {"store" : "yes", "term_vector" : "with_positions_offsets"}
    }
}

Highlighting Tags

By default, the highlighting will wrap highlighted text in <em> and </em>. This can be controlled by setting pre_tags and post_tags, for example:

{
    "query" : {...},
    "highlight" : {
        "pre_tags" : ["<tag1>", "<tag2>"],
        "post_tags" : ["</tag1>", "</tag2>"],
        "fields" : {
            "_all" : {}
        }
    }
}

There can be a single tag or more, and the “importance” is ordered. There are also built in “tag” schemas, with currently a single schema called styled with pre_tags of:

<em class="hlt1">, <em class="hlt2">, <em class="hlt3">,
<em class="hlt4">, <em class="hlt5">, <em class="hlt6">,
<em class="hlt7">, <em class="hlt8">, <em class="hlt9">,
<em class="hlt10">

And post tag of </em>. If you think of more nice to have built in tag schemas, just send an email to the mailing list or open an issue. Here is an example of switching tag schemas:

{
    "query" : {...},
    "highlight" : {
        "tags_schema" : "styled",
        "fields" : {
            "content" : {}
        }
    }
}

Highlighted Fragments

Each field highlighted can control the size of the highlighted fragment in characters (defaults to 100), and the maximum number of fragments to return (defaults to 5). For example:

{
    "query" : {...},
    "highlight" : {
        "fields" : {
            "content" : {"fragment_size" : 150, "number_of_fragments" : 3}
        }
    }
}

On top of this it is possible to specify that highlighted fragments are order by score:

{
    "query" : {...},
    "highlight" : {
        "order" : "score",
        "fields" : {
            "content" : {"fragment_size" : 150, "number_of_fragments" : 3}
        }
    }
}

Note the score of text fragment in this case is calculated by Lucene highlighting framework. For implementation details you can check ScoreOrderFragmentsBuilder.java class.

If the number_of_fragments value is set to 0 then no fragments are produced, instead the whole content of the field is returned, and of course it is highlighted. This can be very handy if short texts (like document title or address) need to be highlighted but no fragmentation is required. Note that fragment_size is ignored in this case.

{
    "query" : {...},
    "highlight" : {
        "fields" : {
            "_all" : {},
            "bio.title" : {"number_of_fragments" : 0}
        }
    }
}

Global Settings

Highlighting settings can be set on a global level and then overridden at the field level.

{
    "query" : {...},
    "highlight" : {
        "number_of_fragments" : 3,
        "fragment_size" : 150,
        "tag_schema" : "styled",
        "fields" : {
            "_all" : { "pre_tags" : ["<em>"], "post_tags" : ["</em>"] },
            "bio.title" : { "number_of_fragments" : 0 },
            "bio.author" : { "number_of_fragments" : 0 },
            "bio.content" : { "number_of_fragments" : 5, "order" : "score" }
        }
    }
}