Filtering by Fieldedit

You can filter the search results to display only those documents that contain a particular value in a field. You can also create negative filters that exclude documents that contain the specified field value.

You add field filters from the Fields list or the Documents table. In addition to creating positive and negative filters, the Documents table enables you to filter on whether or not a field is present. The applied filters are shown below the Query bar. Negative filters are shown in red.

To add a filter from the Fields list:

  1. Click the name of the field you want to filter on. This displays the top five values for that field.

    filter field
  2. To add a positive filter, click the Positive Filter button Positive Filter. This includes only those documents that contain that value in the field.
  3. To add a negative filter, click the Negative Filter button Negative Filter. This excludes documents that contain that value in the field.

To add a filter from the Documents table:

  1. Expand a document in the Documents table by clicking the Expand button Expand Button to the left of the document’s table entry.

    Expanded Document
  2. To add a positive filter, click the Positive Filter button Positive Filter Button to the right of the field name. This includes only those documents that contain that value in the field.
  3. To add a negative filter, click the Negative Filter button Negative Filter Button to the right of the field name. This excludes documents that contain that value in the field.
  4. To filter on whether or not documents contain the field, click the Exists button Exists Button to the right of the field name. This includes only those documents that contain the field.

Managing Filtersedit

To modify a filter, hover over it and click one of the action buttons.

filter allbuttons

 

filter enable Enable Filter
Disable the filter without removing it. Click again to reenable the filter. Diagonal stripes indicate that a filter is disabled.
filter pin Pin Filter
Pin the filter. Pinned filters persist when you switch contexts in Kibana. For example, you can pin a filter in Discover and it remains in place when you switch to Visualize. Note that a filter is based on a particular index field—​if the indices being searched don’t contain the field in a pinned filter, it has no effect.
filter toggle Toggle Filter
Switch from a positive filter to a negative filter and vice-versa.
filter delete Remove Filter
Remove the filter.
filter custom Edit Filter
Edit the filter definition. Enables you to manually update the filter query and specify a label for the filter.

To apply a filter action to all of the applied filters, click Actions and select the action.

Editing a Filteredit

You can edit a filter to directly modify the filter query that is performed to filter your search results. This enables you to create more complex filters that are based on multiple fields.

filter custom json

 

For example, you could use a bool query to create a filter for the sample log data that displays the hits that originated from Canada or China that resulted in a 404 error:

{
  "bool": {
    "should": [
      {
        "term": {
          "geoip.country_name.raw": "Canada"
        }
      },
      {
        "term": {
          "geoip.country_name.raw": "China"
        }
      }
    ],
    "must": [
      {
        "term": {
          "response": "404"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}