Request Body

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:

{
    :ref:`_shards <es-guide-reference-api-search-{>`  s <es-guide-reference-api-search-{>`
        "total" : 5,
        "successful" : 5,
        "failed" : 0
    },
    :ref:`hits <es-guide-reference-api-search-{>`  s <es-guide-reference-api-search-{>`
        "total" : 1,
        "hits" : [
            {
                "_index" : "twitter",
                "_type" : "tweet",
                "_id" : "1",
                "_source" : {
                    "user" : "kimchy",
                    "postDate" : "2009-11-15T14:12:12",
                    "message" : "trying out Elastic Search"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

Parameters

Name	Description
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.
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.

Out of the above, the search_type is the one that can not be passed within the search request body, and in order to set it, it must be passed as a request REST parameter.

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.

Note

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.