# Submitting Search Requests to an Amazon CloudSearch Domain
We recommend using one of the AWS SDKs or the AWS CLI to submit search requests. The SDKs and AWS CLI handle request signing for you and provide an easy way to perform all Amazon CloudSearch actions. You can also use the Search Tester in the Amazon CloudSearch console to search your data, browse the results, and view the generated request URLs and JSON and XML responses. For more information, see [Searching with the Search Tester](getting-started-search.md#searching-console).
**Important**
Search endpoints don't change: A domain's document and search endpoints remain the same for the life of the domain. You should cache the endpoints rather than retrieving them before every upload or search request. Querying the Amazon CloudSearch configuration service by calling `aws cloudsearch describe-domains` or `DescribeDomains` before every request is likely to result in your requests being throttled.
IP addresses **do** change: Your domain's IP address *can* change over time, so it's important to cache the endpoint as shown in the console and returned by the `aws cloudsearch describe-domains` command rather than the IP address. You should also re-resolve the endpoint DNS to an IP address regularly. For more information, see [Setting the JVM TTL for DNS Name Lookups](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sdk-for-java/latest/developer-guide/java-dg-jvm-ttl.html).
For example, the following request submits a simple text search for `wolverine` using the AWS CLI and returns just the IDs of the matching documents.
```
aws cloudsearchdomain --endpoint-url http://search-movies-y6gelr4lv3jeu4rvoelunxsl2e.us-east-1.cloudsearch.amazonaws.com search --search-query wolverine --return _no_fields
{
"status": {
"rid": "/rnE+e4oCAqfEEs=",
"time-ms": 6
},
"hits": {
"found": 3,
"hit": [
{
"id": "tt1430132"
},
{
"id": "tt0458525"
},
{
"id": "tt1877832"
}
],
"start": 0
}
}
```
By default, Amazon CloudSearch returns the response in JSON. You can get the results formatted in XML by specifying the `format` parameter. Setting the response format only affects responses to successful requests. The format of an error response depends on the origin of the error. Errors returned by the search service are always returned in JSON. 5xx errors due to server timeouts and other request routing problems are returned in XML.
**Note**
The AWS SDKs return fields as arrays. Single-value fields are returned as arrays with one element, such as:
```
"fields": {
"plot": ["Katniss Everdeen reluctantly becomes the symbol of a mass rebellion against the autocratic Capitol."]
}
```
For development and testing purposes, you can allow anonymous access to your domain's search service and submit unsigned HTTP GET or POST requests directly to your domain's search endpoint. In a production environment, restrict access to your domain to specific IAM roles, groups, or users and submit signed requests using the AWS SDKs or AWS CLI. For information about controlling access for Amazon CloudSearch, see [Configuring Access for Amazon CloudSearch](configuring-access.md). For more information about request signing, see [Signing AWS API Requests](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/signing_aws_api_requests.html).
You can use any method you want to send HTTP requests directly to your domain's search endpoint—you can enter the request URL directly in a Web browser, use cURL to submit the request, or generate an HTTP call using your favorite HTTP library. To specify your search criteria, you specify a query string that specifies the constraints for your search and what you want to get back in the response. The query string must be URL-encoded. The maximum size of a search request submitted via GET is 8190 bytes, including the HTTP method, URI, and protocol version. You can submit larger requests using HTTP POST; however, keep in mind that large, complex requests take longer to process and are more likely to time out. For more information, see [Tuning Search Request Performance in Amazon CloudSearch](tuning-search.md).
For example, the following request submits a structured query to the `search-movies-rr2f34ofg56xneuemujamut52i.us-east-1.cloudsearch.amazonaws.com` domain and gets the contents of the `title` field.
```
http://search-movies-rr2f34ofg56xneuemujamut52i.us-east-1.cloudsearch.
amazonaws.com/2013-01-01/search?q=(and+(term+field%3Dtitle+'star')
(term+field%3Dyear+1977))&q.parser=structured&return=title
```
**Important**
Special characters in the query string must be URL-encoded. For example, you must encode the `=` operator in a structured query as `%3D`: `(term+field%3Dtitle+'star')`. If you don't encode the special characters when you submit the search request, you'll get an `InvalidQueryString` error.
# Searching with the Search Tester
The search tester in the Amazon CloudSearch console enables you to submit sample search requests using any of the supported query parsers: simple, structured, lucene, or dismax. By default, requests are processed with the simple query parser. You can specify options for the selected parser, filter and sort the results, and browse the configured facets. The search hits are automatically highlighted in the search results. For information about how this is done, see [Highlighting Search Hits in Amazon CloudSearch](highlighting.md). You can also select a suggester to get suggestions as you enter terms in the **Search** field. (You must configure a suggester before you can get suggestions. For more information see [Getting Autocomplete Suggestions in Amazon CloudSearch](getting-suggestions.md).)
By default, results are sorted according to an automatically-generated relevance score, * \$1score*. For information about customizing how results are ranked, see [Sorting Results in Amazon CloudSearch](sorting-results.md).
**To search your domain**
1. Go to the Amazon CloudSearch console at [https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/home](https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudsearch/home).
1. In the left navigation panel, choose the name of your domain to open its configuration.
1. Choose **Run a test search**.
1. To perform a simple text search, enter a search query and choose **Run**. By default, all `text` and `text-array` fields are searched.
To search particular fields, expand **Options** and enter a comma-separated list of the fields you want to search in the **Search fields** field. You can append a weight to each field with a caret (^) to control the relative importance of each field in the search results. For example, specifying `title^5, description` weights hits in the `title` field five times more than hits in the `description` field when calculating relevance scores for each matching document.
To use the structured query syntax, select **Structured** from the **Query parser** menu. Once you've selected the structured query parser, enter your structured query in the **Search** field and choose **Run**. For example, to find all of the movies with *star* in the title that were released in the year 2000 or earlier, you could enter: `(and title:'star' year:{,2000])`. For more information, see [Constructing Compound Queries](searching-compound-queries.md). To submit Lucene or DisMax queries, select the appropriate query parser.
You can specify additional options for the selected query parser to configure the default operator and control which operators can be used in a query. For more information, see [Search Request Parameters](search-api.md#search-request-parameters).
You can copy and paste the request URL to submit the request and view the response from a Web browser. Requests can be sent via HTTP or HTTPS.