elasticsearch/docs/reference/index-modules/fielddata.asciidoc

[[index-modules-fielddata]]
== Field data

The field data cache is used mainly when sorting on or faceting on a
field. It loads all the field values to memory in order to provide fast
document based access to those values. The field data cache can be
expensive to build for a field, so its recommended to have enough memory
to allocate it, and to keep it loaded.

The amount of memory used for the field
data cache can be controlled using `indices.fielddata.cache.size`. Note:
reloading  the field data which does not fit into your cache will be expensive
and  perform poorly.

[cols="<,<",options="header",]
|=======================================================================
|Setting |Description
|`indices.fielddata.cache.size` |The max size of the field data cache,
eg `30%` of node heap space, or an absolute value, eg `12GB`. Defaults
to unbounded.

|`indices.fielddata.cache.expire` |A time based setting that expires
field data after a certain time of inactivity. Defaults to `-1`. For
example, can be set to `5m` for a 5 minute expiry.
|=======================================================================

=== Field data formats

The field data format controls how field data should be stored.

Depending on the field type, there might be several field data types
available. In particular, string and numeric types support the `doc_values`
format which allows for computing the field data data-structures at indexing
time and storing them on disk. Although it will make the index larger and may
be slightly slower, this implementation will be more near-realtime-friendly
and will require much less memory from the JVM than other implementations.

Here is an example of how to configure the `tag` field to use the `fst` field
data format.

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
{
    tag: {
        type:      "string",
        fielddata: {
            format: "fst"
        }
    }
}
--------------------------------------------------

It is possible to change the field data format (and the field data settings
in general) on a live index by using the update mapping API. When doing so,
field data which had already been loaded for existing segments will remain
alive while new segments will use the new field data configuration. Thanks to
the background merging process, all segments will eventually use the new
field data format.

[float]
==== Disallowing field data loading

Field data can take a lot of RAM so it makes sense to disable field data
loading on the fields that don't need field data, for example those that are
used for full-text search only. In order to disable field data loading, just
change the field data type to `disabled`. Request that will try to load field
data on any field which is configured with this format will then return an
error.

The `disabled` format is supported by all field types.

[float]
==== String field data types

`paged_bytes` (default)::
    Stores unique terms sequentially in a large buffer and maps documents to
    the indices of the terms they contain in this large buffer.

`fst`::
    Stores terms in a FST. Slower to build than `paged_bytes` but can help lower
    memory usage if many terms share common prefixes and/or suffixes.

`doc_values`::
    Computes and stores field data data-structures on disk at indexing time.
    Lowers memory usage but only works on non-analyzed strings (`index`: `no` or
    `not_analyzed`) and doesn't support filtering.

[float]
==== Numeric field data types

`array` (default)::
    Stores field values in memory using arrays. 

`doc_values`::
    Computes and stores field data data-structures on disk at indexing time.
    Doesn't support filtering.

[float]
==== Geo point field data types

`array` (default)::
    Stores latitudes and longitudes in arrays.

[float]
=== Fielddata loading

By default, field data is loaded lazily, on the first time that a query that
requires field data is fired. However, this can make the first requests that
follow a merge operation quite slow since fielddata loading is a heavy
operation.

It is possible to force field data to be loaded and cached eagerly through the
`loading` setting of fielddata:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
{
    category: {
        type:      "string",
        fielddata: {
            loading: "eager"
        }
    }
}
--------------------------------------------------

[float]
[[field-data-filtering]]
=== Filtering fielddata

It is possible to control which field values are loaded into memory,
which is particularly useful for string fields. When specifying the
<<mapping-core-types,mapping>> for a field, you
can also specify a fielddata filter.

Fielddata filters can be changed using the
<<indices-put-mapping,PUT mapping>>
API. After changing the filters, use the
<<indices-clearcache,Clear Cache>> API
to reload the fielddata using the new filters.

[float]
==== Filtering by frequency:

The frequency filter allows you to only load terms whose frequency falls
between a `min` and `max` value, which can be expressed an absolute
number or as a percentage (eg `0.01` is `1%`). Frequency is calculated
*per segment*. Percentages are based on the number of docs which have a
value for the field, as opposed to all docs in the segment.

Small segments can be excluded completely by specifying the minimum
number of docs that the segment should contain with `min_segment_size`:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
{
    tag: {
        type:      "string",
        fielddata: {
            filter: {
                frequency: {
                    min:              0.001,
                    max:              0.1,
                    min_segment_size: 500
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
--------------------------------------------------

[float]
==== Filtering by regex

Terms can also be filtered by regular expression - only values which
match the regular expression are loaded. Note: the regular expression is
applied to each term in the field, not to the whole field value. For
instance, to only load hashtags from a tweet, we can use a regular
expression which matches terms beginning with `#`:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
{
    tweet: {
        type:      "string",
        analyzer:  "whitespace"
        fielddata: {
            filter: {
                regex: {
                    pattern: "^#.*"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
--------------------------------------------------

[float]
==== Combining filters

The `frequency` and `regex` filters can be combined:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
{
    tweet: {
        type:      "string",
        analyzer:  "whitespace"
        fielddata: {
            filter: {
                regex: {
                    pattern:          "^#.*",
                },
                frequency: {
                    min:              0.001,
                    max:              0.1,
                    min_segment_size: 500
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
--------------------------------------------------

[float]
[[field-data-monitoring]]
=== Monitoring field data

You can monitor memory usage for field data using
<<cluster-nodes-stats,Nodes Stats API>>