Why search is Elasticsearch's core purpose - See It in Action

Why Search is Elasticsearch's Core Purpose

📖 Scenario: Imagine you have a large collection of documents, like a library of books or a big list of customer reviews. You want to find specific information quickly, like all books about cooking or reviews mentioning "great service". Elasticsearch helps you do this fast and easily by searching through all your data.

🎯 Goal: You will create a simple Elasticsearch index with some documents, configure a search query, run the search, and see the results. This will show why search is the main reason people use Elasticsearch.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an Elasticsearch index called library with sample documents

Add a configuration variable for the search term

Write a search query to find documents matching the search term

Print the search results showing matched documents

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Elasticsearch is used in many websites and apps to let users quickly find relevant information from large amounts of data.

💼 Career

Knowing how to create indexes and write search queries is essential for roles like data engineer, backend developer, and search specialist.

1

Create the Elasticsearch index with sample documents

Create an Elasticsearch index called library with these exact documents: {"title": "Cooking Basics", "content": "Learn to cook delicious meals."}, {"title": "Gardening Tips", "content": "Grow your own vegetables."}, and {"title": "Travel Guide", "content": "Explore new places around the world."}. Use the index API to add these documents.

Elasticsearch

# Your code here to create index 'library' and add documents

Need a hint?

Use the PUT method to add documents to the library index with IDs 1, 2, and 3.

2

Add a search term variable

Create a variable called search_term and set it to the string "cook". This will be the word you want to find in the documents.

Elasticsearch

PUT /library/_doc/1
{
  "title": "Cooking Basics",
  "content": "Learn to cook delicious meals."
}

PUT /library/_doc/2
{
  "title": "Gardening Tips",
  "content": "Grow your own vegetables."
}

PUT /library/_doc/3
{
  "title": "Travel Guide",
  "content": "Explore new places around the world."
}

# Create a variable called search_term with value "cook"
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just write search_term = "cook" below the existing code.

3

Write a search query using the search term

Write a search query using the search_term variable to find documents in the library index where the content field matches the search term. Use the match query inside the query object.

Elasticsearch

PUT /library/_doc/1
{
  "title": "Cooking Basics",
  "content": "Learn to cook delicious meals."
}

PUT /library/_doc/2
{
  "title": "Gardening Tips",
  "content": "Grow your own vegetables."
}

PUT /library/_doc/3
{
  "title": "Travel Guide",
  "content": "Explore new places around the world."
}

search_term = "cook"

# Write a search query using match on content with search_term
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use GET /library/_search with a query object containing match on content with the value of search_term.

4

Print the search results

Print the search results showing the titles of documents that matched the search term "cook". Assume the search response is stored in a variable called response. Use a loop to print each matched document's _source.title.

Elasticsearch

PUT /library/_doc/1
{
  "title": "Cooking Basics",
  "content": "Learn to cook delicious meals."
}

PUT /library/_doc/2
{
  "title": "Gardening Tips",
  "content": "Grow your own vegetables."
}

PUT /library/_doc/3
{
  "title": "Travel Guide",
  "content": "Explore new places around the world."
}

search_term = "cook"

GET /library/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match": {
      "content": "cook"
    }
  }
}

response = {
  "hits": {
    "hits": [
      {"_source": {"title": "Cooking Basics"}}
    ]
  }
}

# Print the titles of matched documents
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Loop over response["hits"]["hits"] and print each _source["title"].