Using Elasticsearch and NEST in

NET
Lucas Garcia · Follow
7 min read · Jun 3, 2023

13

Elasticsearch is an amazing distributed search engine that can handle large

volumes of data in real-time. It’s the perfect solution for developers who need
advanced search capabilities like sorting, filtering, and text analysis. And the best
part? You can easily use Elasticsearch in your .NET applications, thanks to the
powerful client libraries available!

📚 The official Elasticsearch.Net library is a low-level client library that provides

support for multiple versions of Elasticsearch. But if you want a more user-friendly
and object-oriented interface for interacting with Elasticsearch, then NEST
(Elasticsearch .NET) is the way to go! With NEST, you can map your .NET objects
directly to document types in Elasticsearch, making it incredibly easy to index and
retrieve data.

🚀 Getting started with Elasticsearch in .NET is a breeze. Simply add the

corresponding NuGet package for the client library you want to use (like NEST),
and you’re ready to go. And with this powerful tool at your disposal, you can
easily build search functionality into your applications like never before.

In this first part So lets go check this out …

Elasticsearch Features for .NET Applications

Elasticsearch is a powerful search and analytics engine that offers a wide
range of features for building robust applications. In this article, we’ll
explore some of the key features provided by Elasticsearch and how they can
be utilized in .NET applications. Let’s dive in!

1. 🔍 Advanced Text Search

Elasticsearch provides advanced text search capabilities, enabling you to
perform complex and precise searches. You can utilize features like phrase
matching, fuzzy search, prefix search, wildcard search, and proximity
search to enhance your search experience.

// Perform a fuzzy search for the term "hello" in the "content" field
var searchResponse = client.Search<Person>(s => s
.Query(q => q
.Match(m => m
.Field(f => f.Content)
.Query("hello")
.Fuzziness(Fuzziness.Auto)
)
)
)

In the context of Elasticsearch, a fuzzy search is a type of search that allows

for approximate matching of terms rather than exact matching. It is
particularly useful when you want to find results that are similar to a given
term but may contain slight variations, such as spelling mistakes,
transpositions, or missing characters.

When performing a fuzzy search, Elasticsearch analyzes the search term and
looks for documents that have terms similar to the provided query term. It
calculates a similarity score based on the Levenshtein distance algorithm,
which measures the number of single-character edits required to transform
one term into another.

2. ⏰ Real-Time Indexing
Elasticsearch is designed for real-time indexing and search scenarios. It can
handle large volumes of data and provide fast results even in high-traffic
situations.

// Index a new document in real-time

var person = new Person { Id = 1, Name = "John Doe", Age = 30 };
var indexResponse = client.IndexDocument(person);

3. ➕ Aggregations
Aggregations in Elasticsearch allow you to perform real-time data analysis
and summarization. You can calculate statistical metrics, perform grouping,
extract unique values, create histograms, and more.

// Perform a date histogram aggregation to analyze the distribution of documents

var searchResponse = client.Search<Person>(s => s
.Aggregations(a => a
.DateHistogram("documents_over_time", dh => dh
.Field(f => f.Timestamp)
.CalendarInterval(DateInterval.Month)
)
)
);

4. 🌍 Geospatial Search
Elasticsearch provides built-in support for geospatial search and analysis.
You can store points, shapes, and geographic polygons and perform
proximity queries, region filtering, and distance calculations.

// Perform a geo-distance query to find documents within a certain radius of a s

var searchResponse = client.Search<Person>(s => s
.Query(q => q
.GeoDistance(gd => gd
.Field(f => f.Location)
.Distance("10km")
.Location(40.7128, -74.0060)
)
)
);

5. 📝 Text Analysis
Elasticsearch offers powerful text analysis capabilities, including
tokenization, filtering, normalization, and stemming. You have fine-grained
control over how your documents are processed during indexing and search.

// Define a custom analyzer with tokenizers and filters

var createIndexResponse = client.CreateIndex("my-index", c => c
.Settings(s => s
.Analysis(a => a
.Tokenizers(t => t
.Whitespace("my-tokenizer")
)
.Analyzers(an => an
.Custom("my-analyzer", ca => ca
.Tokenizer("my-tokenizer")
.Filters("lowercase", "stop", "stemmer")
)
)
)
)
.Map<Person>(m => m
.Properties(p => p
.Text(t => t
.Name("content")
.Analyzer("my-analyzer")
)
)
)
);

6. Filters
In addition to queries, Elasticsearch provides filters for document filtering
based on specific criteria. Filters can be used to narrow down the search to a
subset of documents or to apply additional constraints to the results.

// Apply a filter to retrieve documents with an age greater than 30

var searchResponse = client.Search<Person>(s => s
.Query(q => q
.Bool(b => b
.Filter(f => f
.Range(r => r
.Field(f => f.Age)
.GreaterThan(30)
)
)
)
)
);

These are just a few examples of the features provided by Elasticsearch.

There are many more features available, such as suggestions, highlighting,
sorting, data pipelines, and integrations with other popular tools. The
official Elasticsearch documentation is a great resource for more detailed
information.

NEST x Elasticsearch : Which to chose?

When working with Elasticsearch in .NET applications, you have the option
to use NEST (Elasticsearch .NET), a high-level client library built on top of
Elasticsearch.Net. While Elasticsearch.Net provides a low-level interface for
Elasticsearch, NEST adds convenience, simplicity, and additional features
that make working with Elasticsearch in .NET more developer-friendly.
Here’s why you might consider using both NEST and Elasticsearch.Net:

1. 🎯 Simplified API
NEST offers a simplified and strongly-typed API that aligns with .NET
conventions. Its fluent and intuitive syntax makes Elasticsearch operations
easier to work with in .NET applications.

2. 📚 Mapping to POCO objects

NEST allows you to define Plain Old CLR Objects (POCOs) to represent your
documents. It automatically maps these objects to Elasticsearch data
structures, simplifying indexing and retrieval. Instead of dealing with JSON
directly, you can work with familiar .NET objects.

3. 🧩 LINQ support
NEST integrates LINQ (Language Integrated Query) expressions, enabling
you to write expressive queries using LINQ syntax. This facilitates complex
querying, filtering, sorting, and aggregations on your data.

4. 🧬 Serialization and deserialization

NEST handles serialization and deserialization of .NET objects to JSON,
ensuring seamless interaction with Elasticsearch. It offers configuration
options for customizing serialization, such as ignoring properties, applying
converters, and controlling field name mappings.

5.🗄 Index management

NEST simplifies index management tasks like creating, deleting, and
updating indexes. It provides methods and helpers for handling index
settings, mappings, and aliases, allowing programmatic index management.

6. ✅ Integration with other features

NEST integrates with various Elasticsearch features like pipelines, analyzers,
ingest nodes, and scripts. Dedicated methods and abstractions in NEST
make these features easily accessible from your .NET application.

7. 🔄 Compatibility and versioning

NEST is designed to be compatible with specific Elasticsearch versions,
ensuring you can leverage the latest Elasticsearch enhancements. It provides
version-specific NuGet packages, allowing you to select the appropriate
NEST version for your Elasticsearch version.

Using both NEST and Elasticsearch.Net together empowers you to benefit

from NEST’s simplicity and convenience while retaining access to
Elasticsearch.Net’s low-level capabilities when necessary.

In summary, NEST enhances Elasticsearch usage in .NET applications by

providing a higher-level API with simplified syntax, POCO mapping, LINQ
support, serialization/deserialization, index management, feature
integration, and version compatibility. This combination of NEST and
Elasticsearch.Net enables seamless and efficient Elasticsearch integration in
your .NET projects. Check here the official NEST documentation

Using Elasticsearch in a .NET 5+ Application

Step 1: Install Elasticsearch.Net and NEST packages

Open your .NET project in your preferred code editor.

Install the Elasticsearch.Net and NEST packages using NuGet Package

Manager or the .NET CLI.

For NuGet Package Manager, search for “Elasticsearch.Net” and “NEST”

and install them.

For .NET CLI, navigate to your project directory and run the following
commands:

dotnet add package Elasticsearch.Net

dotnet add package NEST

Step 2: Set up Elasticsearch connection settings

In your code, add the necessary namespaces:

using Elasticsearch.Net;
using Nest;

Create an instance of the Elasticsearch client by providing the

appropriate Elasticsearch server URL:

var connectionSettings = new ConnectionSettings

(
new Uri("http://localhost:9200"));
ElasticClient elasticClient = new ElasticClient(connectionSettings
);

Step 3: Index a document

Define a class to represent your document:

public class Person

{
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public int Age { get; set; }
}

Index a document by calling the IndexDocumentAsync method:

Person person = new Person { Id = 1, Name = "John Doe", Age = 30 };

var indexResponse = await elasticClient.IndexDocumentAsync(person);

if (indexResponse.IsValid)
Console.WriteLine("Document indexed successfully!");

Step 4: Search for documents

Perform a search query using the SearchAsync method:

var searchResponse = await elasticClient.SearchAsync<Person>(s => s

.Query(q => q
.Match(m => m
.Field(f => f.Name)
.Query("John")
)
)
);

foreach (var hit in searchResponse.Hits)

{
Person person = hit.Source;
Console.WriteLine($"Name: {person.Name}, Age: {person.Age}");
}

Step 5: Handle errors and cleanup

Handle any potential errors by checking the IsValid property of the
response object:

if (!indexResponse.IsValid)
{
Console.WriteLine("Failed to index the document!");
Console.WriteLine(indexResponse.ServerError?.ToString());
}

Dispose of the Elasticsearch client to release resources:

elasticClient.Dispose();

Remember to handle exceptions appropriately and customize the code

based on your specific use case. This example demonstrates the basic steps
of indexing a document and performing a search using Elasticsearch in a
.NET 5+ application.

Please note that this is a simplified example, and in real-world scenarios,

you may need to configure additional settings, mappings, or perform more
advanced operations based on your requirements.

Don’t forget to connect with me on Linkedin… See you next time.

Elasticsearch Nest Dotnet Search Database

13

Written by Lucas Garcia Follow

40 Followers

Fullstack C# developer @ WEG. Now working on improving Engineering processes

through code https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasmggarcia22/

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