Fuzzy query

Returns documents that contain terms similar to the search term, as measured by a Levenshtein edit distance.

An edit distance is the number of one-character changes needed to turn one term into another. These changes can include:

• Changing a character (box → fox)
• Removing a character (black → lack)
• Inserting a character (sic → sick)
• Transposing two adjacent characters (act → cat)

To find similar terms, the fuzzy query creates a set of all possible variations, or expansions, of the search term within a specified edit distance. The query then returns exact matches for each expansion.

 GET /_search {
  "query": {
    "fuzzy": {
      "user.id": {
        "value": "ki"
      }
    }
  }
}

 GET /_search {
  "query": {
    "fuzzy": {
      "user.id": {
        "value": "ki",
        "fuzziness": "AUTO",
        "max_expansions": 50,
        "prefix_length": 0,
        "transpositions": true,
        "rewrite": "constant_score_blended"
      }
    }
  }
}

<field>

(Required, object) Field you wish to search.

value

(Required, string) Term you wish to find in the provided <field>.

fuzziness

(Optional, string) Maximum edit distance allowed for matching. See Fuzziness for valid values and more information.

max_expansions

(Optional, integer) Maximum number of variations created. Defaults to 50.

prefix_length

(Optional, integer) Number of beginning characters left unchanged when creating expansions. Defaults to 0.

transpositions

(Optional, Boolean) Indicates whether edits include transpositions of two adjacent characters (ab → ba). Defaults to true.

rewrite

(Optional, string) Method used to rewrite the query. For valid values and more information, see the rewrite parameter.

Fuzzy queries will not be executed if search.allow_expensive_queries is set to false.