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Elasticsearch: The Definitive Guide [2.x] » Getting Started » Full-Body Search » Empty Search
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Empty Searchedit

Let’s start with the simplest form of the search API, the empty search, which returns all documents in all indices:

GET /_search
{}

This is an empty request body.

Just as with a query-string search, you can search on one, many, or _all indices, and one, many, or all types:

GET /index_2014*/type1,type2/_search
{}

And you can use the from and size parameters for pagination:

GET /_search
{
  "from": 30,
  "size": 10
}

A GET Request with a Body?

The HTTP libraries of certain languages (notably JavaScript) don’t allow GET requests to have a request body. In fact, some users are suprised that GET requests are ever allowed to have a body.

The truth is that RFC 7231—the RFC that deals with HTTP semantics and content—​does not define what should happen to a GET request with a body! As a result, some HTTP servers allow it, and some—​especially caching proxies—​don’t.

The authors of Elasticsearch prefer using GET for a search request because they feel that it describes the action—​retrieving information—​better than the POST verb. However, because GET with a request body is not universally supported, the search API also accepts POST requests:

POST /_search
{
  "from": 30,
  "size": 10
}

The same rule applies to any other GET API that requires a request body.

We present aggregations in depth in Aggregations, but for now, we’re going to focus just on the query.

Instead of the cryptic query-string approach, a request body search allows us to write queries by using the query domain-specific language, or query DSL.

« Full-Body Search Query DSL »