I am using the elasticsearch python client to make some queries to the elasticsearch instance that we are hosting.

I noticed that some characters need to be escaped. Specifically, these...

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

Is there a clean way to do this beyond what I've already got in mind? Surely there is a cleaner way than doing

term.replace("+", "\+").replace("-", "\-")# ....etc

I was hoping there was an API call that I could use, but I can't find one in the docs. This seems like a common enough issue that it should have been solved by someone.

Does anyone know the "correct" way of doing this?

EDIT : I am still not sure if there is an API call, but I got things concise enough to where I am happy.

def needs_escaping(character):                                                                                                                                                                                        escape_chars = {                                                                                                                                                                                               '\\' : True, '+' : True, '-' : True, '!' : True,                                                                                                                                                           '(' : True, ')' : True, ':' : True, '^' : True,                                                                                                                                                            '[' : True, ']': True, '\"' : True, '{' : True,                                                                                                                                                            '}' : True, '~' : True, '*' : True, '?' : True,                                                                                                                                                            '|' : True, '&' : True, '/' : True                                                                                                                                                                         }                                                                                                                                                                                                              return escape_chars.get(character, False)   sanitized = ''
for character in query:                                                                                                                                                                                            if needs_escaping(character):                                                                                                                                                                                 sanitized += '\\%s' % character                                                                                                                                                                           else:                                                                                                                                                                                                      sanitized += character 

Yes, those characters will need to be replaced within content you want to search in a query_string query. To do that (assuming you are using PyLucene), you should be able to use QueryParserBase.escape(String).

Barring that, you could always adapt the QueryParserBase.escape source code to your needs:

public static String escape(String s) {StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++) {char c = s.charAt(i);// These characters are part of the query syntax and must be escapedif (c == '\\' || c == '+' || c == '-' || c == '!' || c == '(' || c == ')' || c == ':'|| c == '^' || c == '[' || c == ']' || c == '\"' || c == '{' || c == '}' || c == '~'|| c == '*' || c == '?' || c == '|' || c == '&' || c == '/') {sb.append('\\');}sb.append(c);}return sb.toString();
}