Elasticsearch DSL is a high-level library whose aim is to help with writing and running queries against Elasticsearch. It is built on top of the official low-level client (elasticsearch-py
).
It provides a more convenient and idiomatic way to write and manipulate queries. It stays close to the Elasticsearch JSON DSL, mirroring its terminology and structure. It exposes the whole range of the DSL from Python either directly using defined classes or a queryset-like expressions.
It also provides an optional wrapper for working with documents as Python objects: defining mappings, retrieving and saving documents, wrapping the document data in user-defined classes.
To use the other Elasticsearch APIs (eg. cluster health) just use the underlying client.
Let's have a typical search request written directly as a dict
:
from elasticsearch import Elasticsearch
client = Elasticsearch()
response = client.search(
index="my-index",
body={
"query": {
"filtered": {
"query": {
"bool": {
"must": [{"match": {"title": "python"}}],
"must_not": [{"match": {"description": "beta"}}]
}
},
"filter": {"term": {"category": "search"}}
}
},
"aggs" : {
"per_tag": {
"terms": {"field": "tags"},
"aggs": {
"max_lines": {"max": {"field": "lines"}}
}
}
}
}
)
for hit in response['hits']['hits']:
print(hit['_score'], hit['_source']['title'])
for tag in response['aggregations']['per_tag']['buckets']:
print(tag['key'], tag['max_lines']['value'])
The problem with this approach is that it is very verbose, prone to syntax mistakes like incorrect nesting, hard to modify (eg. adding another filter) and definitely not fun to write.
Let's rewrite the example using the Python DSL:
from elasticsearch import Elasticsearch
from elasticsearch_dsl import Search, Q
client = Elasticsearch()
s = Search(using=client, index="my-index") \
.filter("term", category="search") \
.query("match", title="python") \
.query(~Q("match", description="beta"))
s.aggs.bucket('per_tag', 'terms', field='tags') \
.metric('max_lines', 'max', field='lines')
response = s.execute()
for hit in response:
print(hit._meta.score, hit.title)
for tag in response.aggregations.per_tag.buckets:
print(tag.key, tag.max_lines.value)
As you see, the library took care of:
- creating appropriate
Query
objects by name (eq. "match")- composing queries into a compound
bool
query- creating a
filtered
query since.filter()
was used- providing a convenient access to response data
- no curly or square brackets everywhere
Let's have a simple Python class representing an article in a blogging system:
from datetime import datetime
from elasticsearch import Elasticsearch
from elasticsearch_dsl import DocType, String, Date, Integer, connections
# Define a default Elasticsearch client
connections.add_connection(Elasticsearch())
class Article(DocType):
title = String(analyzer='snowball', fields={'raw': String(index='not_analyzed')})
body = String(analyzer='snowball')
tags = String(index='not_analyzed')
published_from = Date()
lines = Integer()
class Meta:
index = 'blog'
def save(self, ** kwargs):
self.lines = len(self.body.split())
return super().save(** kwargs)
def is_published(self):
return datetime.now() < self.published_from
article = Article(id=42, title='Hello world!', tags=['test'])
article.body = ''' looong text '''
article.published_from = datetime.now()
article.save()
article = Article.get(id=42)
print(article.is_published())
# Display cluster health
print(connections.get_connection().cluster.health())
In this example you can see:
- providing a default Elasticsearch client
- defining fields with mapping configuration
- setting index name
- defining custom methods
- overriding the built-in
.save()
method to hook into the persistence life cycle- retrieving and saving the object into Elasticsearch
- accessing the underlying client for other APIs
You don't have to port your entire application to get the benefits of the Python DSL, you can start gradually by creating a Search
object from your existing dict
, modifying it using the API and serializing it back to a dict
:
body = {...} # insert complicated query here
# Convert to Search object
s = Search.from_dict(body)
# Add some filters, aggregations, queries, ...
s.filter("term", tags="python")
# Convert back to dict to plug back into existing code
body = s.to_dict()
Copyright 2013 Elasticsearch
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