A search request can be executed purely using a URI by providing request parameters. Not all search options are exposed when executing a search using this mode, but it can be handy for quick "curl tests". Here is an example:

$ curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/twitter/tweet/_search?q=user:kimchy'

And here is a sample response:

{
    "_shards":{
        "total" : 5,
        "successful" : 5,
        "failed" : 0
    },
    "hits":{
        "total" : 1,
        "hits" : [
            {
                "_index" : "twitter",
                "_type" : "tweet",
                "_id" : "1", 
                "_source" : {
                    "user" : "kimchy",
                    "postDate" : "2009-11-15T14:12:12",
                    "message" : "trying out Elastic Search"
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

The parameters allowed in the URI are:

• q: The query string (maps to the query_string query).
• df: The default field to use when no field prefix is defined within the query.
• analyzer: The analyzer name to be used when analyzing the query string.
• default_operator: The default operator to be used, can be AND or OR. Defaults to OR.
• explain: For each hit, contain an explanation of how scoring of the hits was computed.
• fields: The selective fields of the document to return for each hit (either retried from the index if stored, or from the _source if not), comma delimited. Defaults to the internal _source field. Not specifying any value will cause no fields to return.
• sort: Sorting to perform. Can either be in the form of fieldName, or fieldName:asc/fieldName:desc. The fieldName can either be an actual field within the document, or the special _score name to indicate sorting based on scores. There can be several sort parameters (order is important).
• timeout: A search timeout, bounding the search request to be executed within the specified time value and bail with the hits accumulated up to that point when expired. Defaults to no timeout.
• from: The starting from index of the hits to return. Defaults to 0.
• size: The number of hits to return. Defaults to 10.
• search_type: The type of the search operation to perform. Can be dfs_query_then_fetch, dfs_query_and_fetch, query_then_fetch, query_and_fetch. Defaults to query_then_fetch.