Use highlight in ElasticSearch with _source:false

I don't believe it's possible.

However you can use _analyze on your search query and document and then compare tokens to highlight in your code.

For example:

curl -XGET 'localhost:9200/test/_analyze?analyzer=snowball' -d 'some search query keywords'

{"tokens":[{"token":"some","start_offset":0,"end_offset":4,"type":"","position":1},{"token":"search","start_offset":5,"end_offset":11,"type":"","position":2},{"token":"query","start_offset":12,"end_offset":17,"type":"","position":3},{"token":"keyword","start_offset":18,"end_offset":26,"type":"","position":4}]}

curl -XGET 'localhost:9200/test/_analyze?analyzer=snowball' -d '$document_text'

{"tokens":..}

Then look for those token matches in document and offsets should provide you with correct highlight location in document.

{  "query": {    "query_string": {      "query": "**",      "fields["      sometext "]}},"      highlight {        "pre_tags": ["<em>"],        "post_tags[</em>"],      "order": "score",      "require_field_match": true,      "fields": {        "sometext": {          "fragment_size": 180,          "number_of_fragments": 1        }      }    }  }

If the source is not deactivated by default you can:

{    "_source" :  ["_id"],    "query": {        "match" : {            "attachment.content" : "Setup"        }    },    "highlight": {        "fields" : {            "attachment.content" : {}        }    }}

You have to put something in the _score. It still returns every "metadata" about the document it found:

{    "took": 4,    "timed_out": false,    "_shards": {        "total": 5,        "successful": 5,        "skipped": 0,        "failed": 0    },    "hits": {        "total": 1,        "max_score": 0.2919385,        "hits": [            {                "_index": "test",                "_type": "_doc",                "_id": "xpto",                "_score": 0.2919385,                "_source": {},                "highlight": {                    "attachment.content": [                        "<em>Setup</em> the [GenericCommand.properties] file\n\nThe commands that ought to be recognized have to be defined"                    ]                }            }        ]    }}