Administrating MarkLogic Server

Element-word-query-throughs allow you to specify elements that should be included in text searches that use cts:element-word-query on a parent element. For example, consider this XML fragment:

<a>
  <b>hello</b>
  <c>goodbye</c>
</a>

If you perform a cts:element-word-query on <a> searching for the word hello, the search does not find any matches in this fragment. The following query shows this pattern:

cts:search(fn:doc(), cts:element-word-query(xs:QName("a"), "hello"))

This query does not find any matches because cts:element-word-query only searches for text nodes that are immediate children of the element <a>, not text nodes that are children of any child nodes of <a>. Because hello is in a text node that is a child of <b>, it does not satisfy the cts:element-word-query.

If you add an element-word-query-through for the element <b>, however, then the cts:element-word-query on <a> searching for the word hello returns a match. The element-word-query-through on <b> causes the text node children of <b> behave like the text node children of its parent (in this case, <a>).