Pulling enough results¶

Perhaps you want to group your results by some field, and you don't know exactly how many results you will need in order to return 10 grouped results. With a scrolled search you can keep pulling more results until you have enough. For instance, you can search emails in a mailing list, and return results grouped by "thread_id":

    my (%groups,@results);
    my $scroll = $es->scroll_helper(
        index => 'my_emails',
        type  => 'email',
        body  => { query => {... some query ... }}
    );
    my $doc;
    while (@results < 10 and $doc = $scroll->next) {
        my $thread = $doc->{_source}{thread_id};
        unless ($groups{$thread}) {
            $groups{$thread} = [];
            push @results, $groups{$thread};
        }
        push @{$groups{$thread}},$doc;
    }

Extracting all documents¶

Often you will want to extract all (or a subset of) documents in an index. If you want to change your type mappings, you will need to reindex all of your data. Or perhaps you want to move a subset of the data in one index into a new dedicated index. In these cases, you don't care about sort order, you just want to retrieve all documents which match a query, and do something with them. For instance, to retrieve all the docs for a particular "client_id":

    my $scroll = $es->scroll_helper(
        index       => 'my_index',
        size        => 1000,
        body        => {
            query => {
                match => {
                    client_id => 123
                }
            },
            sort => '_doc'
        }
    );
    while (my $doc = $scroll->next) {
        # do something
    }

Very often the something that you will want to do with these results involves bulk-indexing them into a new index. The easiest way to do this is to use the built-in "reindex()" in Search::Elasticsearch::Client::8_0::Direct functionality provided by Elasticsearch.

new()¶

    use Search::Elasticsearch;
    my $es = Search::Elasticsearch->new(...);
    my $scroll = $es->scroll_helper(
        scroll         => '1m',            # optional
        %search_params
    );

The "scroll_helper()" in Search::Elasticsearch::Client::8_0::Direct method loads Search::Elasticsearch::Client::8_0::Scroll class and calls "new()", passing in any arguments.

You can specify a "scroll" duration (which defaults to "1m"). Any other parameters are passed directly to "search()" in Search::Elasticsearch::Client::8_0::Direct.

The "scroll" duration tells Elasticearch how long it should keep the scroll alive. Note: this duration doesn't need to be long enough to process all results, just long enough to process a single batch of results. The expiry gets renewed for another "scroll" period every time new a new batch of results is retrieved from the cluster.

By default, the "scroll_id" is passed as the "body" to the scroll request.

The "scroll" request uses "GET" by default. To use "POST" instead, set send_get_body_as to "POST".

next()¶

    $doc  = $scroll->next;
    @docs = $scroll->next($num);

The next() method returns the next result, or the next $num results (pulling more results if required). If all results have been exhausted, it returns an empty list.

drain_buffer()¶

    @docs = $scroll->drain_buffer;

The drain_buffer() method returns all of the documents currently in the buffer, without fetching any more from the cluster.

refill_buffer()¶

    $total = $scroll->refill_buffer;

The refill_buffer() method fetches the next batch of results from the cluster, stores them in the buffer, and returns the total number of docs currently in the buffer.

buffer_size()¶

    $total = $scroll->buffer_size;

The buffer_size() method returns the total number of docs currently in the buffer.

finish()¶

    $scroll->finish;

The finish() method clears out the buffer, sets "is_finished()" to "true" and tries to clear the "scroll_id" on Elasticsearch. This API is only supported since v0.90.6, but the call to "clear_scroll" is wrapped in an "eval" so the finish() method can be safely called with any version of Elasticsearch.

When the $scroll instance goes out of scope, "finish()" is called automatically if required.

is_finished()¶

    $bool = $scroll->is_finished;

A flag which returns "true" if all results have been processed or "finish()" has been called.

"total"¶

The total number of documents that matched your query.

"max_score"¶

The maximum score of any documents in your query.

"aggregations"¶

Any aggregations that were specified, or "undef"

"facets"¶

Any facets that were specified, or "undef"

"suggest"¶

Any suggestions that were specified, or "undef"

"took"¶

How long the original search took, in milliseconds

"took_total"¶

How long the original search plus all subsequent batches took, in milliseconds.