Full-Featured ElasticSearch Ruby Client with a Chainable DSL

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Using SearchFlip it is dead-simple to create index classes that correspond to ElasticSearch indices and to manipulate, query and aggregate these indices using a chainable, concise, yet powerful DSL. Finally, SearchFlip supports ElasticSearch 1.x, 2.x, 5.x, 6.x. Check section Feature Support for version dependent features."hello world", default_field: "title").where(visible: true).aggregate(:user_id).sort(id: "desc")

CommentIndex.aggregate(:user_id) do |aggregation|
  aggregation.aggregate(histogram: { date_histogram: { field: "created_at", interval: "month" }})

CommentIndex.range(:created_at, gt: - 1.week, lt: ["approved", "pending"])

Comparison with other gems


# elasticsearch-ruby
  query: {
    query_string: {
      query: "hello world",
      default_operator: "AND"

# searchkick"hello world", where: { available: true }, order: { id: "desc" }, aggs: [:username])

# search_flip
CommentIndex.where(available: true).search("hello world").sort(id: "desc").aggregate(:username)

Reference Docs

SearchFlip has a great documentation. Check youself at


Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'search_flip'

and then execute

$ bundle

or install it via

$ gem install search_flip


You can change global config options like:

SearchFlip::Config[:environment] = "development"
SearchFlip::Config[:base_url] = ""

Available config options are:

  • index_prefix to have a prefix added to your index names automatically. This can be useful to separate the indices of e.g. testing and development environments.
  • base_url to tell search_flip how to connect to your cluster
  • bulk_limit a global limit for bulk requests
  • auto_refresh tells search_flip to automatically refresh an index after import, index, delete, etc operations. This is e.g. usuful for testing, etc. Defaults to false.


First, create a separate class for your index and include SearchFlip::Index.

class CommentIndex
  include SearchFlip::Index

Then tell the Index about the type name, the correspoding model and how to serialize the model for indexing.

class CommentIndex
  include SearchFlip::Index

  def self.type_name

  def self.model

  def self.serialize(comment)
      username: comment.username,
      title: comment.title,
      message: comment.message

You can additionally specify an index_scope which will automatically be applied to scopes, eg. ActiveRecord::Relation objects, passed to #import, #index, etc. This can be used to preload associations that are used when serializing records or to restrict the records you want to index.

class CommentIndex
  # ...

  def self.index_scope(scope)

CommentIndex.import(Comment.all) # => CommentIndex.import(Comment.all.preload(:user))

Please note, ElasticSearch allows to have multiple types per index. However, this forces to have the same mapping for fields having the same name even though the fields live in different types of the same index. Thus, this gem is using a different index for each type by default, but you can change that. Simply supply a custom index_name.

class CommentIndex
  # ...

  def self.index_name

  # ...

Optionally, specify a custom mapping:

class CommentIndex
  # ...

  def self.mapping
      comments: {
        properties: {
          # ...

  # ...

or index settings:

def self.index_settings
    settings: {
      number_of_shards: 10,
      number_of_replicas: 2

Then you can interact with the index:


index records (automatically uses the bulk API):

CommentIndex.import([Comment.find(1), Comment.find(2)])
CommentIndex.import(Comment.where("created_at > ?", - 7.days))

query records:

# => 2838"title:hello").records
# => [#<Comment ...>, #<Comment ...>, ...]

CommentIndex.where(username: "mrkamel").total_entries
# => 13

# => {1=>#<SearchFlip::Result doc_count=37 ...>, 2=>... }
..."hello world").sort(id: "desc").aggregate(:username).request
# => {:query=>{:bool=>{:must=>[{:query_string=>{:query=>"hello world", :default_operator=>:AND}}]}}, ...}

delete records:

# for ElasticSearch >= 2.x and < 5.x, the delete-by-query plugin is required
# for the following query:


# or delete manually via the bulk API:

CommentIndex.match_all.find_each do |record|
  CommentIndex.bulk do |indexer|

Advanced Usage

SearchFlip supports even more advanced usages, like e.g. post filters, filtered aggregations or nested aggregations via simple to use API methods.

Post filters

All criteria methods (#where, #where_not, #range, etc.) are available in post filter mode as well, ie. filters/queries applied after aggregations are calculated. Checkout the ElasticSearch docs for further info.

query = CommentIndex.aggregate(:user_id)
query = query.post_where(reviewed: true)
query = query.post_search("username:a*")

Checkout PostFilterable for a complete API reference.


SearchFlip allows to elegantly specify nested aggregations, no matter how deeply nested:

query = OrderIndex.aggregate(:username, order: { revenue: "desc" }) do |aggregation|
  aggregation.aggregate(revenue: { sum: { field: "price" }})

Generally, aggregation results returned by ElasticSearch are wrapped in a SearchFlip::Result, which wraps a Hashie::Mashsuch that you can access them via:


Still, if you want to get the raw aggregations returned by ElasticSearch, access them without supplying any aggregation name to #aggregations:

query.aggregations # => returns the raw aggregation section

query.aggregations["username"]["buckets"].detect { |bucket| bucket["key"] == "mrkamel" }["revenue"]["value"] # => 238.50

Once again, the criteria methods (#where, #range, etc.) are available in aggregations as well:

query = OrderIndex.aggregate(average_price: {}) do |aggregation|
  aggregation = aggregation.match_all
  aggregation = aggregation.where(user_id: if current_user

  aggregation.aggregate(average_price: { avg: { field: "price" }})


Checkout Aggregatable as well as Aggregation for a complete API reference.


query = CommentIndex.suggest(:suggestion, text: "helo", term: { field: "message" })
query.suggestions(:suggestion).first["text"] # => "hello"


CommentIndex.highlight([:title, :message])
CommentIndex.highlight(:title, require_field_match: false)
CommentIndex.highlight(title: { type: "fvh" })
query = CommentIndex.highlight(:title).search("hello")
query.results[0].highlight.title # => "<em>hello</em> world"

Advanced Criteria Methods

There are even more methods to make your life easier, namely source, scroll, profile, includes, preload, find_in_batches, find_each, find_results_in_batches, failsafe and unscope to name just a few:

  • source

In case you want to restrict the returned fields, simply specify the fields via #source:

CommentIndex.source([:id, :message]).search("hello world")
  • paginate, page, per

SearchFlip supports will_paginate and kaminari compatible pagination. Thus, you can either use #paginate or #page in combination with #per:

CommentIndex.paginate(page: 3, per_page: 50)
  • scroll

You can as well use the underlying scroll API directly, ie. without using higher level pagination:

query = CommentIndex.scroll(timeout: "5m")

until query.records.empty?
  # ...

  query = query.scroll(id: query.scroll_id, timeout: "5m")
  • profile

Use #profile to enable query profiling:

query = CommentIndex.profile(true)
query.raw_response["profile"] # => { "shards" => ... }
  • preload, eager_load and includes

Uses the well known methods from ActiveRecord to load associated database records when fetching the respective records themselves. Works with other ORMs as well, if supported.

Using #preload:

CommentIndex.preload(:user, :post).records
PostIndex.includes(comments: :user).records

or #eager_load

CommentIndex.eager_load(:user, :post).records
PostIndex.eager_load(comments: :user).records

or #includes

CommentIndex.includes(:user, :post).records
PostIndex.includes(comments: :user).records
  • find_in_batches

Used to fetch and yield records in batches using the ElasicSearch scroll API. The batch size and scroll API timeout can be specified."hello world").find_in_batches(batch_size: 100) do |batch|
  # ...
  • find_results_in_batches

Used like find_in_batches, but yielding the raw results instead of database records. Again, the batch size and scroll API timeout can be specified."hello world").find_results_in_batches(batch_size: 100) do |batch|
  # ...
  • find_each

Like #find_in_batches, use #find_each to fetch records in batches, but yields one record at a time."hello world").find_each(batch_size: 100) do |record|
  # ...
  • failsafe

Use #failsafe to prevent any exceptions from being raised for query string syntax errors or ElasticSearch being unavailable, etc."invalid/request").execute
# raises SearchFlip::ResponseError

# ..."invalid/request").failsafe(true).execute
# => #<SearchFlip::Response ...>
  • merge

You can merge criterias, ie. combine the attributes (constraints, settings, etc) of two individual criterias:

CommentIndex.where(approved: true).merge("hello"))
# equivalent to: CommentIndex.where(approved: true).search("hello")
  • unscope

You can even remove certain already added scopes via #unscope:

CommentIndex.aggregate(:username).search("hello world").unscope(:search, :aggregate)
  • timeout

Specify a timeout to limit query processing time:

  • terminate_after

Activate early query termination to stop query processing after the specified number of records has been found:


For further details and a full list of methods, check out the reference docs.

Non-ActiveRecord models

SearchFlip ships with built-in support for ActiveRecord models, but using non-ActiveRecord models is very easy. The model must implement a find_each class method and the Index class needs to implement Index.record_id and Index.fetch_records. The default implementations for the index class are as follows:

class MyIndex
  include SearchFlip::Index

  def self.record_id(object)

  def self.fetch_records(ids)
    model.where(id: ids)

Thus, simply add your custom implementation of those methods that work with whatever ORM you use.

Date and Timestamps in JSON

ElasticSearch requires dates and timestamps to have one of the formats listed here:

However, JSON.generate in ruby by default outputs something like:

# => "{\"time\":\"2018-02-22 18:19:33 UTC\"}"

This format is not compatible with ElasticSearch by default. If you're on Rails, ActiveSupport adds its own #to_json methods to Time, Date, etc. However, ActiveSupport checks whether they are used in combination with JSON.generate or not and adapt:
=> "\"2018-02-22T18:18:22.088Z\""

=> "{\"time\":\"2018-02-22 18:18:59 UTC\"}"

SearchFlip is using the Oj gem to generate JSON. More concretely, SearchFlip is using:

Oj.dump({ key: "value" }, mode: :custom, use_to_json: true)

This mitigates the issues if you're on Rails:

Oj.dump(, mode: :custom, use_to_json: true)
# => "\"2018-02-22T18:21:21.064Z\""

However, if you're not on Rails, you need to add #to_json methods to Time, Date and DateTime to get proper serialization. You can either add them on your own, via other libraries or by simply using:

require "search_flip/to_json"

Feature Support

  • #post_search and #profile are only supported from up to ElasticSearch version >= 2.
  • for ElasticSearch 2.x, the delete-by-query plugin is required to delete records via queries

Keeping your Models and Indices in Sync

Besides the most basic approach to get you started, SarchFlip currently doesn't ship with any means to automatically keep your models and indices in sync, because every method is very much bound to the concrete environment and depends on your concrete requirements. In addition, the methods to achieve model/index consistency can get arbitrarily complex and we want to keep this bloat out of the SearchFlip codebase.

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  include SearchFlip::Model


It uses after_commit (if applicable, after_save, after_destroy and after_touch otherwise) hooks to synchronously update the index when your model changes.


  1. Fork it
  5. Create new Pull Request

Running the test suite

Running the tests is super easy. The test suite uses sqlite, such that you only need to install ElasticSearch. You can install ElasticSearch on your own, or you can e.g. use docker-compose:

$ cd search_flip
$ sudo ES_IMAGE=elasticsearch:5.4 docker-compose up
$ rake test

That's it.