---
title: Term
---

A term query treats the query as a single token. Because it does not apply any additional tokenization or processing
to the query, it is useful when looking for **exact** matches.

The term query should not be confused with the [match](/documentation/advanced/full-text/match) query, which auto-tokenizes
the query string.

## Basic Usage

Matches documents containing a specified [term](/documentation/concepts/term).

<CodeGroup>
```sql Function Syntax
SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE id @@@ paradedb.term('description', 'shoes');
```
```sql JSON Syntax
SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE id @@@
'{
    "term": {
        "field": "description",
        "value": "shoes"
    }
}'::jsonb;
```
</CodeGroup>

<div className="mt-8" />

<ParamField body="field" required>
  Specifies the field within the document to search for the term. If omitted,
  all indexed fields will be searched.
</ParamField>
<ParamField body="value" required>
  Value to search for in the document field.
</ParamField>

Numeric, boolean, or datetime fields can also be passed into the `term` query.

<CodeGroup>
```sql Function Syntax
SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE id @@@ paradedb.term('rating', 4);
```
```sql JSON Syntax
SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE id @@@
'{
    "term": {
        "field": "rating",
        "value": 4
    }
}'::jsonb;
```
</CodeGroup>

## Enumerated Types

`term` can be used to filter over custom Postgres [enums](/documentation/indexing/create_index#enumerated-types)
if the query term is explicitly cast to the enum type. If JSON syntax is used, the underlying ordinal value of the enum must be used.

<CodeGroup>
```sql Function Syntax
-- Assume we have indexed an enum called color
SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE id @@@ paradedb.term('color', 'red'::color);
```
```sql JSON Syntax
-- Assume we have indexed an enum called color and 'red' has an ordinal of 1.0
SELECT description, rating, category
FROM mock_items
WHERE id @@@
'{
    "term": {
        "field": "color",
        "value": 1.0
    }
}'::jsonb;
```
</CodeGroup>