!CHAPTER Fulltext indexes

!SUBSECTION Introduction to Fulltext Indexes

This is an introduction to ArangoDB's fulltext indexes.

It is possible to define a fulltext index on one textual attribute of a
collection of documents. The fulltext index can then be used to efficiently find
exact words or prefixes of words contained in these documents.

!SECTION Accessing Fulltext Indexes from the Shell

`ensureFulltextIndex(field, minWordLength)`

Creates a fulltext index on all documents on attribute field. All documents, which do not have the attribute field or that have a non-textual value inside their field attribute are ignored.

The minimum length of words that are indexed can be specified with the minWordLength parameter. Words shorter than minWordLength characters will not be indexed. minWordLength has a default value of 2, but this value might be changed in future versions of ArangoDB. It is thus recommended to explicitly specify this value

In case that the index was successfully created, the index identifier is returned.

	arangod> db.emails.ensureFulltextIndex("body");
	{ "id" : "emails/42725508", "unique" : false, "type" : "fulltext", "fields" : ["body"], "isNewlyCreated" : true }

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@anchor IndexFulltextShellEnsureFulltextIndex
@copydetails JSF_ArangoCollection_prototype_ensureFulltextIndex
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