How to search in all fields of indexed entities in ElasticSeacrch using hibernateSearch 6

Question

I have following method which searches in ElasticSearch using Hibernate Search API. I pass queryString value as "addresses.address_key:123" which searches in addresses.address_key as mentioned in fields(addresses.address_key).

How can I make this method take any input in queryString, for example: first_name:john and make it search in all FullTextFields.

ElasticSearch version: 8.10 HibernateSearch version: 6.2.2

public Page<Employee> searchEmployee(String queryString) {
       try {
            SearchSession searchSession = Search.session(entityManager);

            SearchResult<Employee> searchResult = searchSession.search(Employee.class)
                    .extension(ElasticsearchExtension.get())
                    .where(f -> f.simpleQueryString().fields("addresses.address_key").matching(queryString))
                    .fetch(Math.toIntExact(page.getOffset()), page.getPageSize());

            Page<Employee> pageResult = new PageImpl<>(searchResult.hits(), page, searchResult.total().hitCount());
            return pageResult;
        } catch (SearchException pe) {
           throw pe;
        }
}

Entity classes which are indexed:

@Indexed(index = "employee")
public class Employee {

  @FullTextField(name = "employee_key")
  private String employeeKey;

  @FullTextField(name = "first_name")
  private String firstName;
    
  @IndexedEmbedded(includeEmbeddedObjectId = true, includeDepth = 2)
  private Address addresses;
}

public class Address {
    
  @FullTextField(name = "address_key")
  private String addressKey;

  @FullTextField(name = "street_name")
  private String streetName;

} 

Answer 1

You can target multiple fields explicitly when you define your predicate:

SearchResult<Employee> searchResult = searchSession.search(Employee.class)
        .where(f -> f.simpleQueryString()
                .fields("employee_key", "first_name", "addresses.address_key")
                .matching(queryString))
        .fetch(Math.toIntExact(page.getOffset()), page.getPageSize());

There is no option to just target "all text fields" at the moment; see https://hibernate.atlassian.net/browse/HSEARCH-3926 .

---

Also, just to be clear, the simple-query-string syntax does not support explicitly referring to fields in the query string.

In this example:

f.simpleQueryString().fields("addresses.address_key")
        .matching("addresses.address_key:123")

... the "addresses.address_key:" prefix in the searched string ("addresses.address_key:123") has not particular meaning and will just be interpreted as terms to be found in the document.

You might as well have written it like this:

f.simpleQueryString().fields("addresses.address_key")
        .matching("addresses.address_key 123")

But really, I think what you want is this:

f.simpleQueryString().fields("addresses.address_key")
        .matching("123")