Advanced Elasticsearch 7.0

The search_after parameter

The search_after parameter provides you with a cursor similar to scroll, but it does not keep a snapshot, hence, it is cheaper. Since the response is stateless, you cannot assume that subsequent jumps are in the same context. The use of search_after is based on sort and order. You need to specify the same number of values in the search_after parameter as in the sort parameter, and those values must be ordered in the same way as in the sort clause. When the search_after parameter is used, the from parameter should not be used.

Let's look at an example that requests a jump to an entry after rating=5 and symbol=EES. The search results are first sorted with the rating field, followed by the symbol field. As shown in ...