Elasticsearch date range intersection

Question

I'm storing something like the following information in elastic search:

{ "timeslot_start_at" : "2013-02-01", "timeslot_end_at" : "2013-02-03" }

Given that I have another date range (given from user input for example) I am wanting to search for an intersecting time range. Similar to this: Determine Whether Two Date Ranges Overlap Which outlines that the following logic is what i'm after:

(StartDate1 <= EndDate2) and (StartDate2 <= EndDate1)

But I'm unsure of how to fit this into an elastic search query, would I use a range filter and only set the 'to' values, leaving the from blank? Or is there a more efficient way of doing this?

Answer 1

Update: It is now possible to use date_range data type that was added in elasticsearch v5.2. For an earlier version of elasticsearch the following solution still applies.

To test for intersection, you should combine two range queries into a single query using bool query:

{
    "bool": {
        "must": [
            {
                "range": {
                    "timeslot_start_at": {
                        "lte": "2013-02-28"
                    }
                }
            },
            {
                "range": {
                    "timeslot_end_at": {
                        "gte": "2013-02-03"
                    }
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}