Make it easier to discover Lucene Query and Query DSL Syntax Help

[tbragin]

Currently, it is hard for a user to discover that the search bar supports Lucene Query and Elasticsearch Query DSL syntax. When there are no documents found, we do display some Lucene query search assistance in the main frame itself. However, if there are any documents found in Discover, or if you are in Visualize or Dashboard, there is no way to discover this support other than looking at the docs.

One possibility is to enhance the typeahead assistant in the search bar to provide these links.

Currently, it offers access to search history, which is useful, but how about adding more help at the bottom? Some ideas:

• Describe basic search / query options
  1. Keyword search
  2. Lucene query syntax -> Link to detailed Lucene Query Help
  3. Query DSL -> Link to detailed ES Query DSL Help
• (optional) Auto-complete for Lucene query syntax (related: Kibana 4 auto-completion in searches #1651, auto-completion for query panel  #2651)
• (optional) Provide a link to a fully-fledged query DSL editor, if that’s what user wants to do (Add a JSON editor for entering query DSL #2321)

[jccq]

very useful indeed.
Configurable Autocompletion using ES indexes would also be quite useful. E.g. we use Kibana not for logs but for browsing entities, people, companies etc. being able to get a good autocomplation when searching for a specific company would be great.

[mradamlacey]

+1 for autocompletion. Would be a great feature to make the full Lucene syntax more discoverable

[rkhapre]

+1 for auto-completion.
+1 Type ahead suggest features...

[sts]

Just some thoughts:

• tab completion

• drop layer which provides the current position of input with context/help (eg. table)

  email: info@example.com OR . . . 
  ------ ---------------- --
  |                 |   |
  * show possible ke|ys * help with syntax
                    |
                    * start autocompleting values

• first keypress is down-arrow? bring up a query history/fuzzy autocomplete

• stem based upon field popularity

• info whether in Lucene or Query DSL mode

• considering zsh or google spreadsheets good examples

[chenryn]

+1

[jccq]

franky also a simple opening panel with example like https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-query-string-query.html#query-string-syntax would be a great improvement

[mightydok]

+1 for issue

[stv-io]

+1

[jccq]

how about autosearching for field values e.g. category:ga[mes is suggested?]

[dav3860]

Search bar auto-completion would be a great addition to Kibana.

[nicocsgamer]

+1

[Bargs]

@tbragin regardless of future plans, I feel like we should at least provide a link to the query string query documentation, what do you think? At the moment it's not at all obvious where to find the documentation.

[tbragin]

@Bargs couldn't agree more.

[tbragin]

The only question is, where to put the link? The other approach i've seen is to have a fold-out from the search bar that has some in-product docs and links off to more info.

[Bargs]

@cjcenizal what do you think of Tanya's proposal above? I quite like it, but I dunno if you've established other conventions for in page documentation yet. At the moment I would implement this as a very simple panel with the existing hints you see when there are 0 results and a link to the query string query documentation.

[cjcenizal]

@Bargs I think this is a great idea! I put together this very simple wireframe as a guide.

Does this look like what you had in mind? I think it can be accomplished with the kuiSubTitle, kuiText, kuiTable, and kuiLink classes. I don't think it's worth formatting the "Example queries" like code, since that's not how they appear in the actual search box itself. Let's try using the kuiTable class for the table, for now... it may work, or it may not. We might have to create some special classes to remove lines and simplify if it looks too busy here. What do you think?

[Bargs]

@cjcenizal I love it, I'll take a swing at it and show you when I've got something. Thanks!

[trtrmitya]

+1. What @sts proposed looks very useful!

[rahulghanate]

Apart from lucene syntaxs, suggestions for fields are much needed.

[Bargs]

@rahulghanate we're actively working on this for our new query language #12315