Highlighting does not work in Elasticsearch and PHP

Question

I've just downloaded and installed the last version of Elasticsearch on my Windows machine. I did my first search queries and everything seemed to work ok. However. when I try to highlight the search results, I fail. So, this is how my query looks like:

$params = [
    'index' => 'test_index',
    'type' => 'test_index_type',
    'body' => [
        'query' => [
            'bool' => [
                'should' => [ 'match' => [ 'field1' => '23' ] ]
            ]
        ],
        'highlight' => [
            'pre_tags' => "<em>", 
            'post_tags' => "</em>",
            'fields' => (object)Array('field1' => new stdClass),
            'require_field_match' => false
        ]
     ]     
]

$res = $client->search($params);

On the whole the query itself works nice - the results are filtered. In the console I see, that all documents indeed contain "23" value in their field1 field. However, these tags -  are simply not added to the result. What I see is just the raw value in field1 like "some text 23", "23 another text". It is not what I expect to see - "some text 23", "23 another text". So, what is wrong with that and how can I fix it?

It looks like pre_tags and post_tags may expect an array...can you try wrapping both in em strings in []? — Sam
– Sam, Commented Nov 1, 2016 at 20:18
Did you try running that query outside PHP? (Like using the Sense plugin in Kibana or a simple curl command.) Does the highlighting work? — Andrei Stefan
– Andrei Stefan, Commented Nov 1, 2016 at 20:19
@Sam. It does not help. I checked it. I get filtered results, but without any highlighting — Jacobian
– Jacobian, Commented Nov 2, 2016 at 9:15
@Andrei Stefan. I tried curl, but it works really terrible on Windows. I'm not able to make requests that contain -d flag and some json body - on Windows in this case I'm getting some parse errors. — Jacobian
– Jacobian, Commented Nov 2, 2016 at 9:36

Dekel · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-02 12:50:50Z

19

+100

From the manual:

The value of pre_tags and post_tags should be an array (however if you don't want to change the em tags you can ignore them, they already set as default).
The fields value should be an array, key is the field name and the value is an array with the field options.

Try this fix:

$params = [
    'index' => 'test_index',
    'type' => 'test_index_type',
    'body' => [
        'query' => [
            'bool' => [
                'should' => [ 'match' => [ 'field1' => '23' ] ]
            ]
        ],
        'highlight' => [
            // 'pre_tags' => ["<em>"], // not required
            // 'post_tags' => ["</em>"], // not required
            'fields' => [
                'field1' => new \stdClass()
            ],
            'require_field_match' => false
        ]
     ]     
];

$res = $client->search($params);
var_dump($res['hits']['hits'][0]['highlight']);

update

Did a double check, the value of the field in the fields array should be an object (which is a requirement, not exactly the same as other options).
The pre/post_tags can also be strings (and not array).
Did you check the correct response? $res['hits']['hits'][0]['highlight']

The important thing to notice is that the highligted results goes into the highlight array - $res['hits']['hits'][0]['highlight'].

edited Nov 2, 2016 at 12:50

answered Nov 2, 2016 at 1:15

Dekel

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8 Comments

Jacobian Over a year ago

Thanks! I will check it in a minute.

Jacobian Over a year ago

Unfortunatelly, it is not working. Now I'm getting this error message [highlight_field] Expected START_OBJECT but was: START_ARRAY. So, I think, there is some trouble with 'field1' => [] in your example. By the way, in docs it looks like so "fields" : { "content" : {} }. I see no arrays here.

Jacobian Over a year ago

While, this structure is working - 'fields' => ['field1' => (object)[]]. But still, neither default pre_tags and post_tags (when I ignore them), nor implicit 'pre_tags' => [''], 'post_tags' => [''] work.

Dekel Over a year ago

@Jacobian, check the update please. Which version of the php library you use?

Jacobian Over a year ago

I installed the library with composer. The file looks like {"require": { "elasticsearch/elasticsearch": "~5.0" }}

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