BoolQuery for Must, Should, Filter, MustNot, and MinimumShouldMatch

BoolQuery is the main way to combine ranking clauses with hard constraints.

Structure

• should: contributes score
• must: required to appear
• filter: required but not intended for scoring logic
• mustNot: excluded documents

By default, should clauses are optional whenever must or filter is present. If a bool query contains only should clauses, at least one should clause must match.

import { BoolQuery, MatchQuery, OP, TermQuery } from "@tryformation/querylight-ts";

const query = new BoolQuery(
  [
    new MatchQuery("title", "phrase search", OP.AND, false, 3.0),
    new MatchQuery("body", "phrase search", OP.AND, false, 1.5)
  ],
  [],
  [new TermQuery("section", "Queries")],
  [new TermQuery("level", "advanced")]
);

minimumShouldMatch

Use the final constructor parameter when you want a specific number of should clauses to become mandatory.

const query = new BoolQuery(
  [
    new MatchQuery("title", "vector"),
    new MatchQuery("body", "search"),
    new MatchQuery("tags", "ranking")
  ],
  [],
  [],
  [],
  undefined,
  2
);

Good use cases

• Search content but restrict to a section.
• Hide advanced entries in an onboarding view.
• Combine phrase-heavy title matches with broader body matches.
• Promote preferred matches without filtering out the rest.
• Require two or more optional signals before a document is accepted.

Learn more

• Boolean model of information retrieval on Wikipedia