Does Azure Cognitive Search support dynamic field mapping?

Question

Does ACS have an equivalent mechanism to Elasticsearch's dynamic field mapping?

I'm porting a platform across from ES that uses it (to allow users to store + search user-defined fields), but I can't find an equivalent mechanism in ACS.

Answer 1

Here is my model where the value part is multivalue.

    {  
      "name": "Metadata",  
      "type": "Edm.ComplexType",  
      "fields": [  
        {  
          "name": "Properties",  
          "type": "Collection(Edm.ComplexType)",  
          "fields": [  
            {  
              "name": "Name",  
              "type": "Edm.String",  
              "searchable": true,  
              "filterable": true,  
              "retrievable": true,  
              "sortable": false,  
              "facetable": true,  
              "key": false,  
              "indexAnalyzer": null,  
              "searchAnalyzer": null,  
              "analyzer": "pattern",  
              "normalizer": null,  
              "synonymMaps": []  
            },  
            {  
              "name": "Values",  
              "type": "Collection(Edm.String)",  
              "searchable": true,  
              "filterable": true,  
              "retrievable": true,  
              "sortable": false,  
              "facetable": true,  
              "key": false,  
              "indexAnalyzer": null,  
              "searchAnalyzer": null,  
              "analyzer": "pattern",  
              "normalizer": null,  
              "synonymMaps": []  
            }  
          ]  
        }  
      ]  
    },  

Answer 2

@Andrew Neeson , yes, you can define your own types that store dynamic data. And you can query against that data later. I have a use case where I need to dynamically map user-defined metadata properties from PDF documents to an item in the Azure Cognitive Search index. I added a property to the item I submit to my index. I'm using our own, custom type to represent the data as a list of keys and values.

    // Dynamic list of properties  
    public KeyValEntryList? Metadata { get; set; } = new KeyValEntryList();  

Any data found in the PDF metadata is mapped against this. You can then query against this as any other complex type.