Using a search pipeline

You can use a search pipeline in the following ways:

• Specify an existing pipeline for a request.
• Use a temporary pipeline for a request.
• Set a default pipeline for all requests in an index.

Specifying an existing search pipeline for a request

After you create a search pipeline, you can use the pipeline with a query in the following ways. For a complete example of using a search pipeline with a filter_query processor, see filter_query processor example.

Specifying the pipeline in a query parameter

You can specify the pipeline name in the search_pipeline query parameter as follows:

GET /my_index/_search?search_pipeline=my_pipeline 

Specifying the pipeline in the request body

You can provide a search pipeline ID in the search request body as follows:

GET /my-index/_search { "query": { "match_all": {} }, "from": 0, "size": 10, "search_pipeline": "my_pipeline" } 

For multi-search, you can provide a search pipeline ID in the search request body as follows:

GET /_msearch { "index": "test"} { "query": { "match_all": {} }, "from": 0, "size": 10, "search_pipeline": "my_pipeline"} { "index": "test-1", "search_type": "dfs_query_then_fetch"} { "query": { "match_all": {} }, "search_pipeline": "my_pipeline1" } 

Using a temporary search pipeline for a request

As an alternative to creating a search pipeline, you can define a temporary search pipeline to be used for only the current query:

POST /my-index/_search { "query" : { "match" : { "text_field" : "some search text" } }, "search_pipeline" : { "request_processors": [ { "filter_query" : { "tag" : "tag1", "description" : "This processor is going to restrict to publicly visible documents", "query" : { "term": { "visibility": "public" } } } } ], "response_processors": [ { "rename_field": { "field": "message", "target_field": "notification" } } ] } } 

With this syntax, the pipeline does not persist and is used only for the query for which it is specified.

Default search pipeline

For convenience, you can set a default search pipeline for an index. Once your index has a default pipeline, you don’t need to specify the search_pipeline query parameter in every search request.

Setting a default search pipeline for an index

To set a default search pipeline for an index, specify the index.search.default_pipeline in the index’s settings:

PUT /my_index/_settings { "index.search.default_pipeline" : "my_pipeline" } 

After setting the default pipeline for my_index, you can try the same search for all documents:

GET /my_index/_search 

The response contains only the public document, indicating that the pipeline was applied by default:

{ "took" : 19, "timed_out" : false, "_shards" : { "total" : 1, "successful" : 1, "skipped" : 0, "failed" : 0 }, "hits" : { "total" : { "value" : 1, "relation" : "eq" }, "max_score" : 0.0, "hits" : [ { "_index" : "my_index", "_id" : "1", "_score" : 0.0, "_source" : { "message" : "This is a public message", "visibility" : "public" } } ] } } 

You can search across multiple indexes that share the same default pipeline. For example, alias1 has two indexes, my_index1 and my_index2, both of which have the default pipeline my_pipeline attached to them:

GET /alias1/_search 

The response includes only the public version of the document, confirming that the default pipeline was successfully applied:

{ "took": 59, "timed_out": false, "_shards": { "total": 2, "successful": 2, "skipped": 0, "failed": 0 }, "hits": { "total": { "value": 1, "relation": "eq" }, "max_score": 0.0, "hits": [ { "_index": "my_index1", "_id": "1", "_score": 0.0, "_source": { "message": "This is a public message", "visibility": "public" } } ] } } 

Disabling the default pipeline for a request

If you want to run a search request without applying the default pipeline, you can set the search_pipeline query parameter to _none:

GET /my_index/_search?search_pipeline=_none 

Removing the default pipeline

To remove the default pipeline from an index, set it to null or _none:

PUT /my_index/_settings { "index.search.default_pipeline" : null } 

PUT /my_index/_settings { "index.search.default_pipeline" : "_none" }