mergeTreeTextIndex - ClickHouse Documentation

Represents the dictionary of a text index in MergeTree tables. Returns tokens with their posting list metadata. It can be used for introspection.

Syntax

mergeTreeTextIndex(database, table, index_name)

Arguments

Argument	Description
`database`	The database name to read text index from.
`table`	The table name to read text index from.
`index_name`	The text index to read from.

Returned value

A table object with tokens and their posting list metadata. If the index uses the keyValuePairs tokenizer, each token is a (key, value) pair of a Map column, and the result has two additional columns token_key and token_value with the decoded parts of the token.

Usage Example

Query

CREATE TABLE tab
(
    id UInt64,
    s String,
    INDEX idx_s (s) TYPE text(tokenizer = splitByNonAlpha)
)
ENGINE = MergeTree
ORDER BY id;

INSERT INTO tab SELECT number, concatWithSeparator(' ', 'apple', 'banana') FROM numbers(500);
INSERT INTO tab SELECT 500 + number, concatWithSeparator(' ', 'cherry', 'date') FROM numbers(500);

SELECT * FROM mergeTreeTextIndex(currentDatabase(), tab, idx_s);

Response

   ┌─part_name─┬─token──┬─dictionary_compression─┬─cardinality─┬─num_posting_blocks─┬─has_embedded_postings─┬─has_raw_postings─┬─has_compressed_postings─┐
1. │ all_1_1_0 │ apple  │ front_coded            │         500 │                  1 │                     0 │                0 │                       0 │
2. │ all_1_1_0 │ banana │ front_coded            │         500 │                  1 │                     0 │                0 │                       0 │
3. │ all_2_2_0 │ cherry │ front_coded            │         500 │                  1 │                     0 │                0 │                       0 │
4. │ all_2_2_0 │ date   │ front_coded            │         500 │                  1 │                     0 │                0 │                       0 │
   └───────────┴────────┴────────────────────────┴─────────────┴────────────────────┴───────────────────────┴──────────────────┴─────────────────────────┘

Last modified on September 25, 2026