ElasticSearch query_string fails to parse query with some characters

I know I am late enough but I am posting here and I hope it'll help others. As we know from the Elasticsearch documentation here ES has some reserved characters.

The reserved characters are: + - = && || > < ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \ /

So, now you've two possible solutions to fix it. These are working perfectly for me when I encountered special character issue

Solution 1: Wrap your special characters with \\

"query": {
    "bool": {
      "must": [
        {
          "match": {
            "country_code.keyword": "IT"
          }
        },
        {
          "query_string": {
            "default_field": "display",
            "query": "Magomadas \\(OR\\), Italy"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }

Solution 2: Use simple_query_string with no change on your query but it doesn't support default_field, so you can use fields instead.

  "query": {
    "bool": {
      "must": [
        {
          "match": {
            "country_code.keyword": "IT"
          }
        },
        {
          "simple_query_string": {
            "fields": ["display"], 
            "query": "Magomadas (OR), Italy"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  }

I was reading the documentation and the query_string is more strict. The following are reserved characters: + - = && || > < ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \ /

So, like jhilden said, I would have to escape them or use simple_query_string instead.

Docs: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/query-dsl-query-string-query.html

When using query_string in ES it's a bit weird. You need to escape it with a double backslash.

The following fails:

GET index1/job/_search
{
  "query": {
    "query_string": {
      "fields": ["jobNumber"],
      "query": "827950 { foo"
    }
  }
}

The following works

GET index1/job/_search
{
  "query": {
    "query_string": {
      "fields": ["jobNumber"],
      "query": "827950 \\{ foo"
    }
  }
}

Note: if you were using a terms query or something else like that you would not need to escape that {