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({
  should: [
    new MatchQuery({ field: "title", text: "phrase search", operation: OP.AND, boost: 3.0 }),
    new MatchQuery({ field: "body", text: "phrase search", operation: OP.AND, boost: 1.5 })
  ],
  filter: [new TermQuery({ field: "section", text: "Queries" })],
  mustNot: [new TermQuery({ field: "level", text: "advanced" })]
});

minimumShouldMatch

Use minimumShouldMatch when you want a specific number of should clauses to become mandatory.

const query = new BoolQuery({
  should: [
    new MatchQuery({ field: "title", text: "vector" }),
    new MatchQuery({ field: "body", text: "search" }),
    new MatchQuery({ field: "tags", text: "ranking" })
  ],
  minimumShouldMatch: 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