Elasticsearch provides a full Query DSL (Domain Specific Language) based on JSON to define queries. Think of the Query DSL as an AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) of queries, consisting of two types of clauses:
- Leaf query clauses
-
Leaf query clauses look for a particular value in a particular field, such as the
match
,term
orrange
queries. These queries can be used by themselves. - Compound query clauses
-
Compound query clauses wrap other leaf or compound queries and are used to combine
multiple queries in a logical fashion (such as the
bool
ordis_max
query), or to alter their behaviour (such as theconstant_score
query).
Query clauses behave differently depending on whether they are used in query context or filter context.