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Using the annotated highlighter

The annotated-text plugin includes a custom highlighter designed to mark up search hits in a way which is respectful of the original markup:

 # Example documents PUT my-index-000001/_doc/1 { "my_field": "The cat sat on the [mat](sku3578)" } GET my-index-000001/_search { "query": { "query_string": { "query": "cats" } }, "highlight": { "fields": { "my_field": { "type": "annotated", "require_field_match": false } } } }
  1. The annotated highlighter type is designed for use with annotated_text fields

The annotated highlighter is based on the unified highlighter and supports the same settings but does not use the pre_tags or post_tags parameters. Rather than using html-like markup such as <em>cat</em> the annotated highlighter uses the same markdown-like syntax used for annotations and injects a key=value annotation where _hit_term is the key and the matched search term is the value e.g.

The [cat](_hit_term=cat) sat on the [mat](sku3578)

The annotated highlighter tries to be respectful of any existing markup in the original text:

  • If the search term matches exactly the location of an existing annotation then the _hit_term key is merged into the url-like syntax used in the (...) part of the existing annotation.
  • However, if the search term overlaps the span of an existing annotation it would break the markup formatting so the original annotation is removed in favour of a new annotation with just the search hit information in the results.
  • Any non-overlapping annotations in the original text are preserved in highlighter selections