Suggest

A "suggest search" is a search function that automatically displays suggestions or auto-completions to users as they enter search queries.

A suggest search can be carried out as follows.

query {
  suggest(input: { text: "work" }) {
    queryTime
    suggestions {
      term
      hits
    }
  }
}

The suggestions that would lead to hits are returned as a result. term contains the suggested term, hits returns the number of times the term is contained in the index. This is not the number of search results that would be expected from a search with the term.

{
  "data": {
    "suggest": {
      "suggestions": [
        {
          "term": "work",
          "hits": 32
        },
        {
          "term": "workshop",
          "hits": 7
        },
        {
          "term": "working",
          "hits": 5
        },
        ...
      ]
    }
  }
}

Filters

The same filters can be specified for the suggest search as for a search. The suggest is usually used together with a full-text search. In this case, the filters for the search and the suggest should always be the same. This ensures that the suggestions only return the words that lead to hits for the search.

query {
  suggest(input: { text: "holid", filter: [{ groups: ["1195"] }] }) {
    queryTime
    suggestions {
      term
      hits
    }
  }
}

Minimal hits count

The parameter minHitCount controls the minimum amount of hits a suggestion must have in order to be part of the result. By default, it is set to 0.

Suggestions with 0 hits can occur when filters are applied to the query. While a term may exist in the index, the specific filter constraints might exclude all documents containing that term, resulting in a suggestion that leads to no actual hits.

Often, you want to set the minHitCount to 1 in order to exclude all suggestions that wouldn't lead to a search result anyway.

query {
  suggest(input: { text: "holid", minHitCount: 1 }) {
    queryTime
    suggestions {
      term
      hits
    }
  }
}