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How to fix ElasticSearch 'no [query] registered for [missing]'

Problem:

You are trying to run an ElasticSearch query like

query-missing.json
{
    "query": {
        "missing" : { "field" : "myfield" }
    }
}

to find documents that do not have myfield.

However you only see an error message like this:

elasticsearch-error.txt
elasticsearch.exceptions.RequestError: RequestError(400, 'parsing_exception', 'no [query] registered for [missing]')

Solution

As the ElasticSearch documentation tells, us, there is no missing query! You instead need to use an exists query inside a must_not clause:

query-exists-mustnot.json
{
    "query": {
        "bool": {
            "must_not": {
                "exists": {
                    "field": "myfield"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}
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