Documents - Search Post

Service:

Search Service

API Version:

2023-11-01

Searches for documents in the index.

POST {endpoint}/indexes('{indexName}')/docs/search.post.search?api-version=2023-11-01

URI Parameters

Name	In	Required	Type	Description
endpoint	path	True	string	The endpoint URL of the search service.
indexName	path	True	string	The name of the index.
api-version	query	True	string	Client Api Version.

Request Header

Name	Required	Type	Description
x-ms-client-request-id		string uuid	The tracking ID sent with the request to help with debugging.

Request Body

Name	Type	Description
answers	QueryAnswerType	A value that specifies whether answers should be returned as part of the search response.
captions	QueryCaptionType	A value that specifies whether captions should be returned as part of the search response.
count	boolean	A value that specifies whether to fetch the total count of results. Default is false. Setting this value to true may have a performance impact. Note that the count returned is an approximation.
facets	string[]	The list of facet expressions to apply to the search query. Each facet expression contains a field name, optionally followed by a comma-separated list of name:value pairs.
filter	string	The OData $filter expression to apply to the search query.
highlight	string	The comma-separated list of field names to use for hit highlights. Only searchable fields can be used for hit highlighting.
highlightPostTag	string	A string tag that is appended to hit highlights. Must be set with highlightPreTag. Default is </em>.
highlightPreTag	string	A string tag that is prepended to hit highlights. Must be set with highlightPostTag. Default is <em>.
minimumCoverage	number	A number between 0 and 100 indicating the percentage of the index that must be covered by a search query in order for the query to be reported as a success. This parameter can be useful for ensuring search availability even for services with only one replica. The default is 100.
orderby	string	The comma-separated list of OData $orderby expressions by which to sort the results. Each expression can be either a field name or a call to either the geo.distance() or the search.score() functions. Each expression can be followed by asc to indicate ascending, or desc to indicate descending. The default is ascending order. Ties will be broken by the match scores of documents. If no $orderby is specified, the default sort order is descending by document match score. There can be at most 32 $orderby clauses.
queryType	QueryType	A value that specifies the syntax of the search query. The default is 'simple'. Use 'full' if your query uses the Lucene query syntax.
scoringParameters	string[]	The list of parameter values to be used in scoring functions (for example, referencePointParameter) using the format name-values. For example, if the scoring profile defines a function with a parameter called 'mylocation' the parameter string would be "mylocation--122.2,44.8" (without the quotes).
scoringProfile	string	The name of a scoring profile to evaluate match scores for matching documents in order to sort the results.
scoringStatistics	ScoringStatistics	A value that specifies whether we want to calculate scoring statistics (such as document frequency) globally for more consistent scoring, or locally, for lower latency. The default is 'local'. Use 'global' to aggregate scoring statistics globally before scoring. Using global scoring statistics can increase latency of search queries.
search	string	A full-text search query expression; Use "*" or omit this parameter to match all documents.
searchFields	string	The comma-separated list of field names to which to scope the full-text search. When using fielded search (fieldName:searchExpression) in a full Lucene query, the field names of each fielded search expression take precedence over any field names listed in this parameter.
searchMode	SearchMode	A value that specifies whether any or all of the search terms must be matched in order to count the document as a match.
select	string	The comma-separated list of fields to retrieve. If unspecified, all fields marked as retrievable in the schema are included.
semanticConfiguration	string	The name of a semantic configuration that will be used when processing documents for queries of type semantic.
semanticErrorHandling	SemanticErrorMode	Allows the user to choose whether a semantic call should fail completely (default / current behavior), or to return partial results.
semanticMaxWaitInMilliseconds	integer	Allows the user to set an upper bound on the amount of time it takes for semantic enrichment to finish processing before the request fails.
sessionId	string	A value to be used to create a sticky session, which can help getting more consistent results. As long as the same sessionId is used, a best-effort attempt will be made to target the same replica set. Be wary that reusing the same sessionID values repeatedly can interfere with the load balancing of the requests across replicas and adversely affect the performance of the search service. The value used as sessionId cannot start with a '_' character.
skip	integer	The number of search results to skip. This value cannot be greater than 100,000. If you need to scan documents in sequence, but cannot use skip due to this limitation, consider using orderby on a totally-ordered key and filter with a range query instead.
top	integer	The number of search results to retrieve. This can be used in conjunction with $skip to implement client-side paging of search results. If results are truncated due to server-side paging, the response will include a continuation token that can be used to issue another Search request for the next page of results.
vectorFilterMode	VectorFilterMode	Determines whether or not filters are applied before or after the vector search is performed. Default is 'preFilter' for new indexes.
vectorQueries	VectorQuery[]: RawVectorQuery[]	The query parameters for vector and hybrid search queries.

Responses

Name	Type	Description
200 OK	SearchDocumentsResult	Response containing documents that match the search criteria.
Other Status Codes	SearchError	Error response.

Examples

SearchIndexSearchDocumentsPost

SearchIndexSearchDocumentsSemanticPost

SearchIndexSearchDocumentsPost

Sample request

HTTP

POST https://myservice.search.windows.net/indexes('myindex')/docs/search.post.search?api-version=2023-11-01

{
  "count": true,
  "facets": [
    "category,count:10,sort:count"
  ],
  "filter": "rating gt 4.0",
  "highlight": "description",
  "highlightPostTag": "</em>",
  "highlightPreTag": "<em>",
  "minimumCoverage": null,
  "orderby": "rating desc",
  "queryType": "simple",
  "scoringParameters": [
    "currentLocation--122.123,44.77233"
  ],
  "scoringProfile": "sp",
  "search": "nice hotels",
  "searchFields": "category,description",
  "searchMode": "any",
  "sessionId": "mysessionid",
  "scoringStatistics": "global",
  "select": "hotelId,category,description",
  "skip": 0,
  "top": 10,
  "vectorQueries": [
    {
      "kind": "vector",
      "vector": [
        0.103,
        0.0712,
        0.0852,
        0.1547,
        0.1183
      ],
      "fields": "descriptionEmbedding",
      "k": 5,
      "exhaustive": true
    }
  ],
  "vectorFilterMode": "preFilter"
}

Sample response

Status code:

200

{
  "@odata.count": 25,
  "@search.facets": {
    "category": [
      {
        "count": 1,
        "value": "Economy"
      },
      {
        "count": 1,
        "value": "Luxury"
      }
    ]
  },
  "@search.nextPageParameters": {
    "count": true,
    "facets": [
      "category,count:10,sort:count"
    ],
    "filter": "rating gt 4.0",
    "highlight": "title",
    "highlightPostTag": "</em>",
    "highlightPreTag": "<em>",
    "minimumCoverage": null,
    "orderby": "search.score() desc,rating desc",
    "queryType": "simple",
    "sessionId": "mysessionid",
    "scoringStatistics": "global",
    "scoringParameters": [
      "currentLocation--122.123,44.77233"
    ],
    "scoringProfile": "sp",
    "search": "nice hotels",
    "searchFields": "title,description",
    "searchMode": "any",
    "select": "docId,title,description",
    "skip": 2,
    "top": 8
  },
  "value": [
    {
      "@search.score": 1.5,
      "@search.highlights": {
        "title": [
          "<em>Nice</em> <em>Hotel</em>"
        ]
      },
      "description": "Cheapest hotel in town",
      "docId": "1",
      "title": "Nice Hotel"
    },
    {
      "@search.score": 0.7,
      "@search.highlights": {
        "title": [
          "Fancy <em>Hotel</em>"
        ]
      },
      "description": "Best hotel in town",
      "docId": "2",
      "title": "Fancy Hotel"
    }
  ],
  "@odata.nextLink": "https://myservice.search.windows.net/indexes('myindex')/docs/search.post.search?api-version=2023-11-01"
}

SearchIndexSearchDocumentsSemanticPost

Sample request

HTTP

POST https://myservice.search.windows.net/indexes('myindex')/docs/search.post.search?api-version=2023-11-01

{
  "count": true,
  "highlightPostTag": "</em>",
  "highlightPreTag": "<em>",
  "queryType": "semantic",
  "search": "how do clouds form",
  "semanticConfiguration": "my-semantic-config",
  "answers": "extractive|count-3",
  "captions": "extractive|highlight-true",
  "semanticErrorHandling": "partial",
  "semanticMaxWaitInMilliseconds": 780
}

Sample response

Status code:

200

{
  "@odata.count": 25,
  "@search.answers": [
    {
      "key": "4123",
      "text": "Sunlight heats the land all day, warming that moist air and causing it to rise high into the   atmosphere until it cools and condenses into water droplets. Clouds generally form where air is ascending (over land in this case),   but not where it is descending (over the river).",
      "highlights": "Sunlight heats the land all day, warming that moist air and causing it to rise high into the   atmosphere until it cools and condenses into water droplets. Clouds generally form<em> where air is ascending</em> (over land in this case),   but not where it is<em> descending</em> (over the river).",
      "score": 0.94639826
    }
  ],
  "@search.nextPageParameters": {
    "count": true,
    "highlightPostTag": "</em>",
    "highlightPreTag": "<em>",
    "queryType": "semantic",
    "search": "how do clouds form",
    "semanticConfiguration": "my-semantic-config",
    "answers": "extractive|count-3",
    "captions": "extractive|highlight-true",
    "semanticErrorHandling": "partial",
    "semanticMaxWaitInMilliseconds": 780,
    "skip": 2,
    "top": 8
  },
  "value": [
    {
      "@search.score": 0.5479723,
      "@search.rerankerScore": 1.0321671911515296,
      "@search.captions": [
        {
          "text": "Like all clouds, it forms when the air reaches its dew point—the temperature at which an air mass is cool enough for its water vapor to condense into liquid droplets. This false-color image shows valley fog, which is common in the Pacific Northwest of North America.",
          "highlights": "Like all<em> clouds</em>, it<em> forms</em> when the air reaches its dew point—the temperature at    which an air mass is cool enough for its water vapor to condense into liquid droplets. This false-color image shows valley<em> fog</em>, which is common in the Pacific Northwest of North America."
        }
      ],
      "id": "4123",
      "title": "Earth Atmosphere",
      "content": "Fog is essentially a cloud lying on the ground. Like all clouds, it forms when the air reaches its dew point—the temperature at  \n\nwhich an air mass is cool enough for its water vapor to condense into liquid droplets.\n\nThis false-color image shows valley fog, which is common in the Pacific Northwest of North America. On clear winter nights, the \n\nground and overlying air cool off rapidly, especially at high elevations. Cold air is denser than warm air, and it sinks down into the \n\nvalleys. The moist air in the valleys gets chilled to its dew point, and fog forms. If undisturbed by winds, such fog may persist for \n\ndays. The Terra satellite captured this image of foggy valleys northeast of Vancouver in February 2010.\n\n\n",
      "locations": [
        "Pacific Northwest",
        "North America",
        "Vancouver"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "@odata.nextLink": "https://myservice.search.windows.net/indexes('myindex')/docs/search.post.search?api-version=2023-11-01"
}

Definitions

Name	Description
AnswerResult	An answer is a text passage extracted from the contents of the most relevant documents that matched the query. Answers are extracted from the top search results. Answer candidates are scored and the top answers are selected.
CaptionResult	Captions are the most representative passages from the document relatively to the search query. They are often used as document summary. Captions are only returned for queries of type semantic.
QueryAnswerType	A value that specifies whether answers should be returned as part of the search response.
QueryCaptionType	A value that specifies whether captions should be returned as part of the search response.
QueryType	Specifies the syntax of the search query. The default is 'simple'. Use 'full' if your query uses the Lucene query syntax.
RawVectorQuery	The query parameters to use for vector search when a raw vector value is provided.
ScoringStatistics	A value that specifies whether we want to calculate scoring statistics (such as document frequency) globally for more consistent scoring, or locally, for lower latency. The default is 'local'. Use 'global' to aggregate scoring statistics globally before scoring. Using global scoring statistics can increase latency of search queries.
SearchDocumentsResult	Response containing search results from an index.
SearchError	Describes an error condition for the API.
SearchMode	Specifies whether any or all of the search terms must be matched in order to count the document as a match.
SearchRequest	Parameters for filtering, sorting, faceting, paging, and other search query behaviors.
SearchResult	Contains a document found by a search query, plus associated metadata.
SemanticErrorMode	Allows the user to choose whether a semantic call should fail completely (default / current behavior), or to return partial results.
SemanticErrorReason	Reason that a partial response was returned for a semantic ranking request.
SemanticSearchResultsType	Type of partial response that was returned for a semantic ranking request.
VectorFilterMode	Determines whether or not filters are applied before or after the vector search is performed.
VectorQueryKind	The kind of vector query being performed.

AnswerResult

An answer is a text passage extracted from the contents of the most relevant documents that matched the query. Answers are extracted from the top search results. Answer candidates are scored and the top answers are selected.

Name	Type	Description
highlights	string	Same text passage as in the Text property with highlighted text phrases most relevant to the query.
key	string	The key of the document the answer was extracted from.
score	number	The score value represents how relevant the answer is to the query relative to other answers returned for the query.
text	string	The text passage extracted from the document contents as the answer.

CaptionResult

Captions are the most representative passages from the document relatively to the search query. They are often used as document summary. Captions are only returned for queries of type semantic.

Name	Type	Description
highlights	string	Same text passage as in the Text property with highlighted phrases most relevant to the query.
text	string	A representative text passage extracted from the document most relevant to the search query.

QueryAnswerType

A value that specifies whether answers should be returned as part of the search response.

Name	Type	Description
extractive	string	Extracts answer candidates from the contents of the documents returned in response to a query expressed as a question in natural language.
none	string	Do not return answers for the query.

QueryCaptionType

A value that specifies whether captions should be returned as part of the search response.

Name	Type	Description
extractive	string	Extracts captions from the matching documents that contain passages relevant to the search query.
none	string	Do not return captions for the query.

QueryType

Specifies the syntax of the search query. The default is 'simple'. Use 'full' if your query uses the Lucene query syntax.

Name	Type	Description
full	string	Uses the full Lucene query syntax for searches. Search text is interpreted using the Lucene query language which allows field-specific and weighted searches, as well as other advanced features.
semantic	string	Best suited for queries expressed in natural language as opposed to keywords. Improves precision of search results by re-ranking the top search results using a ranking model trained on the Web corpus.
simple	string	Uses the simple query syntax for searches. Search text is interpreted using a simple query language that allows for symbols such as +, * and "". Queries are evaluated across all searchable fields by default, unless the searchFields parameter is specified.

RawVectorQuery

The query parameters to use for vector search when a raw vector value is provided.

Name	Type	Description
exhaustive	boolean	When true, triggers an exhaustive k-nearest neighbor search across all vectors within the vector index. Useful for scenarios where exact matches are critical, such as determining ground truth values.
fields	string	Vector Fields of type Collection(Edm.Single) to be included in the vector searched.
k	integer	Number of nearest neighbors to return as top hits.
kind	string: vector	The kind of vector query being performed.
vector	number[]	The vector representation of a search query.

ScoringStatistics

A value that specifies whether we want to calculate scoring statistics (such as document frequency) globally for more consistent scoring, or locally, for lower latency. The default is 'local'. Use 'global' to aggregate scoring statistics globally before scoring. Using global scoring statistics can increase latency of search queries.

Name	Type	Description
global	string	The scoring statistics will be calculated globally for more consistent scoring.
local	string	The scoring statistics will be calculated locally for lower latency.

SearchDocumentsResult

Response containing search results from an index.

Name	Type	Description
@odata.count	integer	The total count of results found by the search operation, or null if the count was not requested. If present, the count may be greater than the number of results in this response. This can happen if you use the $top or $skip parameters, or if the query can't return all the requested documents in a single response.
@odata.nextLink	string	Continuation URL returned when the query can't return all the requested results in a single response. You can use this URL to formulate another GET or POST Search request to get the next part of the search response. Make sure to use the same verb (GET or POST) as the request that produced this response.
@search.answers	AnswerResult[]	The answers query results for the search operation; null if the answers query parameter was not specified or set to 'none'.
@search.coverage	number	A value indicating the percentage of the index that was included in the query, or null if minimumCoverage was not specified in the request.
@search.facets	object	The facet query results for the search operation, organized as a collection of buckets for each faceted field; null if the query did not include any facet expressions.
@search.nextPageParameters	SearchRequest	Continuation JSON payload returned when the query can't return all the requested results in a single response. You can use this JSON along with @odata.nextLink to formulate another POST Search request to get the next part of the search response.
@search.semanticPartialResponseReason	SemanticErrorReason	Reason that a partial response was returned for a semantic ranking request.
@search.semanticPartialResponseType	SemanticSearchResultsType	Type of partial response that was returned for a semantic ranking request.
value	SearchResult[]	The sequence of results returned by the query.

SearchError

Describes an error condition for the API.

Name	Type	Description
code	string	One of a server-defined set of error codes.
details	SearchError[]	An array of details about specific errors that led to this reported error.
message	string	A human-readable representation of the error.

SearchMode

Specifies whether any or all of the search terms must be matched in order to count the document as a match.

Name	Type	Description
all	string	All of the search terms must be matched in order to count the document as a match.
any	string	Any of the search terms must be matched in order to count the document as a match.

SearchRequest

Parameters for filtering, sorting, faceting, paging, and other search query behaviors.

Name	Type	Description
answers	QueryAnswerType	A value that specifies whether answers should be returned as part of the search response.
captions	QueryCaptionType	A value that specifies whether captions should be returned as part of the search response.
count	boolean	A value that specifies whether to fetch the total count of results. Default is false. Setting this value to true may have a performance impact. Note that the count returned is an approximation.
facets	string[]	The list of facet expressions to apply to the search query. Each facet expression contains a field name, optionally followed by a comma-separated list of name:value pairs.
filter	string	The OData $filter expression to apply to the search query.
highlight	string	The comma-separated list of field names to use for hit highlights. Only searchable fields can be used for hit highlighting.
highlightPostTag	string	A string tag that is appended to hit highlights. Must be set with highlightPreTag. Default is </em>.
highlightPreTag	string	A string tag that is prepended to hit highlights. Must be set with highlightPostTag. Default is <em>.
minimumCoverage	number	A number between 0 and 100 indicating the percentage of the index that must be covered by a search query in order for the query to be reported as a success. This parameter can be useful for ensuring search availability even for services with only one replica. The default is 100.
orderby	string	The comma-separated list of OData $orderby expressions by which to sort the results. Each expression can be either a field name or a call to either the geo.distance() or the search.score() functions. Each expression can be followed by asc to indicate ascending, or desc to indicate descending. The default is ascending order. Ties will be broken by the match scores of documents. If no $orderby is specified, the default sort order is descending by document match score. There can be at most 32 $orderby clauses.
queryType	QueryType	A value that specifies the syntax of the search query. The default is 'simple'. Use 'full' if your query uses the Lucene query syntax.
scoringParameters	string[]	The list of parameter values to be used in scoring functions (for example, referencePointParameter) using the format name-values. For example, if the scoring profile defines a function with a parameter called 'mylocation' the parameter string would be "mylocation--122.2,44.8" (without the quotes).
scoringProfile	string	The name of a scoring profile to evaluate match scores for matching documents in order to sort the results.
scoringStatistics	ScoringStatistics	A value that specifies whether we want to calculate scoring statistics (such as document frequency) globally for more consistent scoring, or locally, for lower latency. The default is 'local'. Use 'global' to aggregate scoring statistics globally before scoring. Using global scoring statistics can increase latency of search queries.
search	string	A full-text search query expression; Use "*" or omit this parameter to match all documents.
searchFields	string	The comma-separated list of field names to which to scope the full-text search. When using fielded search (fieldName:searchExpression) in a full Lucene query, the field names of each fielded search expression take precedence over any field names listed in this parameter.
searchMode	SearchMode	A value that specifies whether any or all of the search terms must be matched in order to count the document as a match.
select	string	The comma-separated list of fields to retrieve. If unspecified, all fields marked as retrievable in the schema are included.
semanticConfiguration	string	The name of a semantic configuration that will be used when processing documents for queries of type semantic.
semanticErrorHandling	SemanticErrorMode	Allows the user to choose whether a semantic call should fail completely (default / current behavior), or to return partial results.
semanticMaxWaitInMilliseconds	integer	Allows the user to set an upper bound on the amount of time it takes for semantic enrichment to finish processing before the request fails.
sessionId	string	A value to be used to create a sticky session, which can help getting more consistent results. As long as the same sessionId is used, a best-effort attempt will be made to target the same replica set. Be wary that reusing the same sessionID values repeatedly can interfere with the load balancing of the requests across replicas and adversely affect the performance of the search service. The value used as sessionId cannot start with a '_' character.
skip	integer	The number of search results to skip. This value cannot be greater than 100,000. If you need to scan documents in sequence, but cannot use skip due to this limitation, consider using orderby on a totally-ordered key and filter with a range query instead.
top	integer	The number of search results to retrieve. This can be used in conjunction with $skip to implement client-side paging of search results. If results are truncated due to server-side paging, the response will include a continuation token that can be used to issue another Search request for the next page of results.
vectorFilterMode	VectorFilterMode	Determines whether or not filters are applied before or after the vector search is performed. Default is 'preFilter' for new indexes.
vectorQueries	VectorQuery[]: RawVectorQuery[]	The query parameters for vector and hybrid search queries.

SearchResult

Contains a document found by a search query, plus associated metadata.

Name	Type	Description
@search.captions	CaptionResult[]	Captions are the most representative passages from the document relatively to the search query. They are often used as document summary. Captions are only returned for queries of type semantic.
@search.highlights	object	Text fragments from the document that indicate the matching search terms, organized by each applicable field; null if hit highlighting was not enabled for the query.
@search.rerankerScore	number	The relevance score computed by the semantic ranker for the top search results. Search results are sorted by the RerankerScore first and then by the Score. RerankerScore is only returned for queries of type semantic.
@search.score	number	The relevance score of the document compared to other documents returned by the query.

SemanticErrorMode

Allows the user to choose whether a semantic call should fail completely (default / current behavior), or to return partial results.

Name	Type	Description
fail	string	If there is an exception during the semantic processing step, the query will fail and return the appropriate HTTP code depending on the error.
partial	string	If the semantic processing fails, partial results still return. The definition of partial results depends on what semantic step failed and what was the reason for failure.

SemanticErrorReason

Reason that a partial response was returned for a semantic ranking request.

Name	Type	Description
capacityOverloaded	string	The request was throttled. Only the base results were returned.
maxWaitExceeded	string	If semanticMaxWaitInMilliseconds was set and the semantic processing duration exceeded that value. Only the base results were returned.
transient	string	At least one step of the semantic process failed.

SemanticSearchResultsType

Type of partial response that was returned for a semantic ranking request.

Name	Type	Description
baseResults	string	Results without any semantic enrichment or reranking.
rerankedResults	string	Results have been reranked with the reranker model and will include semantic captions. They will not include any answers, answers highlights or caption highlights.

VectorFilterMode

Determines whether or not filters are applied before or after the vector search is performed.

Name	Type	Description
postFilter	string	The filter will be applied after the candidate set of vector results is returned. Depending on the filter selectivity, this can result in fewer results than requested by the parameter 'k'.
preFilter	string	The filter will be applied before the search query.

VectorQueryKind

The kind of vector query being performed.

Name	Type	Description
vector	string	Vector query where a raw vector value is provided.