---
title: Create an Index
noindex: true
canonical: https://docs.paradedb.com/documentation/indexing/create_index
---

The following code block creates a BM25 index over several columns in the `mock_items` table.

```sql
CREATE INDEX search_idx ON mock_items
USING bm25 (id, description, category)
WITH (key_field='id');
```

Only one BM25 index can exist per table. We recommend indexing all columns in a table that may be present in a search query,
including columns used for sorting, grouping, filtering, and aggregations.

```sql
CREATE INDEX search_idx ON mock_items
USING bm25 (id, description, category, rating, in_stock, created_at, metadata, weight_range)
WITH (key_field='id');
```

Most Postgres types, including text, JSON, numeric, timestamp, range, boolean, and arrays, can be indexed.

## Choosing a Key Field

In the `CREATE INDEX` statement above, note the mandatory `key_field` option.
Every BM25 index needs a `key_field`, which is the name of a column that will function as a row’s unique identifier within the index.

The `key_field` must:

1. Have a `UNIQUE` constraint. Usually this means the table's `PRIMARY KEY`.
2. Be the first column in the column list.
3. Be untokenized, if it is a text field.

## Tokenizers

<Note>
  Understanding how tokenization works is key to getting the search results you
  want, as full text search in ParadeDB (and most search tools) is centered
  around token matching. For a refresher, please see the [text search
  overview](/v2/full-text/overview).
</Note>

By default, text columns are tokenized using the [simple](/v2/tokenizers/available_tokenizers/simple) tokenizer, which lowercases and splits on both punctuation and
whitespace. This tokenization strategy is configurable.
For example, the following code block uses the `ngrams` tokenizer for `description`.

```sql
CREATE INDEX search_idx ON mock_items
USING bm25 (id, (description::pdb.ngram(2,3)), category)
WITH (key_field='id');
```

There are many [available tokenizers](/v2/tokenizers/available_tokenizers) to choose from.

## Token Filters

After tokens are created, [token filters](/v2/token_filters/overview) can be configured to apply further processing like lowercasing, stemming, or unaccenting.
For example, the following code block adds English stemming to `description`:

```sql
CREATE INDEX search_idx ON mock_items
USING bm25 (id, (description::pdb.simple('stemmer=english')), category)
WITH (key_field='id');
```