suggestion completion across multiple types in an index

Question

Is it possible to do a suggestion completion on a type? I'm able to do it on an index.

POST /data/_suggest
{
  "data" : {
    "text" : "tr",
    "completion" : {
      "field" : "sattributes",
      "size":50
    }
  }
}

when I do on a type:

POST /data/suggestion/_suggest
{
  "data" : {
    "text" : "tr",
    "completion" : {
      "field" : "sattributes",
      "size":50
    }
  }
}

suggestion is the type.

I don't get any results. I need to do suggestion on two different types articles and books. Do I need to create separate indexes to make them work or is there a way in elasticsearch to accomplish this? In case if I have to search on my index data is there way to get 50 results for type article and 50 results for type book.

Any help is highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Lucene has no concept of types, so in Elasticsearch they are simply implemented as a hidden field called _type. When you search on a particular type, Elasticsearch adds a filter on that field.

The completion suggester doesn't use traditional search at all, which means that it can't apply a filter on the _type field. So you have a couple of options:

1. Use a different completion suggester field per type, eg suggestion_sattributes, othertype_sattributes

2. Index your data with the _type as a prefix, eg type1 actual words to suggest, then when you ask for suggestions, prepend type1 to the query

3. Use separate indices

In fact, option (2) above is being implemented at the moment as the new ContextSuggester which will allow you to do this (and more) automatically.