---
title: "VespaKeywordRetriever"
id: vespakeywordretriever
slug: "/vespakeywordretriever"
description: "A keyword-based Retriever that fetches documents matching a query from the Vespa Document Store."
---

# VespaKeywordRetriever

A keyword-based Retriever that fetches documents matching a query from the Vespa Document Store.

<div className="key-value-table">

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| **Most common position in a pipeline** | 1. Before a [`PromptBuilder`](../builders/promptbuilder.mdx)   in a RAG pipeline 2. The last component in the keyword search pipeline 3. Before an [`ExtractiveReader`](../readers/extractivereader.mdx)   in an extractive QA pipeline |
| **Mandatory init variables**           | `document_store`: An instance of a [VespaDocumentStore](../../document-stores/vespadocumentstore.mdx)                                                                                                                       |
| **Mandatory run variables**            | `query`:  A string                                                                                                                                                                                                          |
| **Output variables**                   | `documents`: A list of documents (matching the query)                                                                                                                                                                       |
| **API reference**                      | [Vespa](/reference/integrations-vespa)                                                                                                                                                                                       |
| **GitHub link**                        | https://github.com/deepset-ai/haystack-core-integrations/tree/main/integrations/vespa                                                                                                                                        |
| **Package name** | `vespa-haystack` |

</div>

## Overview

The `VespaKeywordRetriever` is a keyword-based Retriever compatible with the `VespaDocumentStore`. It runs a [YQL](https://docs.vespa.ai/en/query-language.html) `userQuery()` against your Vespa application and ranks results with a configurable rank profile (defaults to `bm25`, which typically uses Vespa's [BM25 ranking feature](https://docs.vespa.ai/en/reference/bm25.html)).

The retriever expects the underlying Vespa application to expose:

- A text field for the Document body (named `content` by default, configurable on the Document Store via `content_field`). The field needs to be indexed for text matching in your Vespa schema.
- A rank profile that scores lexical matches (named `bm25` by default, configurable via the `ranking` parameter). Pass `ranking=None` to use the schema default profile.

In addition to the `query`, the `VespaKeywordRetriever` accepts other optional parameters, including `top_k` (the maximum number of Documents to retrieve) and `filters` to narrow the search space.

## Installation

Install the `vespa-haystack` integration:

```shell
pip install vespa-haystack
```

To run Vespa locally, see the [Vespa quick start](https://docs.vespa.ai/en/vespa-quick-start.html).

## Usage

### On its own

This Retriever needs the `VespaDocumentStore` and indexed Documents to run. Set the `VESPA_URL` environment variable (or pass `url=...` to the Document Store) to connect to your Vespa application.

```python
from haystack_integrations.document_stores.vespa import VespaDocumentStore
from haystack_integrations.components.retrievers.vespa import (
    VespaKeywordRetriever,
)

document_store = VespaDocumentStore(schema="doc", namespace="doc")
retriever = VespaKeywordRetriever(document_store=document_store)

retriever.run(query="my nice query")
```

### In a RAG pipeline

The prerequisites necessary for running this code are:

- Set an environment variable `OPENAI_API_KEY` with your OpenAI API key.
- Set the `VESPA_URL` environment variable (or pass `url=...` to the Document Store) to connect to your Vespa application.
- A deployed Vespa schema with a `content` text field, a `category` metadata field, and a `bm25` rank profile.

```python
from haystack import Document, Pipeline
from haystack.components.builders.answer_builder import AnswerBuilder
from haystack.components.builders.chat_prompt_builder import ChatPromptBuilder
from haystack.components.generators.chat import OpenAIChatGenerator
from haystack.dataclasses import ChatMessage
from haystack.document_stores.types import DuplicatePolicy

from haystack_integrations.document_stores.vespa import VespaDocumentStore
from haystack_integrations.components.retrievers.vespa import (
    VespaKeywordRetriever,
)

## Create a RAG query pipeline
prompt_template = [
    ChatMessage.from_system("You are a helpful assistant."),
    ChatMessage.from_user(
        "Given these documents, answer the question.\nDocuments:\n"
        "{% for doc in documents %}{{ doc.content }}{% endfor %}\n"
        "Question: {{question}}\nAnswer:",
    ),
]

document_store = VespaDocumentStore(
    schema="doc",
    namespace="doc",
    content_field="content",
    metadata_fields=["category"],
)

documents = [
    Document(
        content="Haystack integrates with Vespa for search.",
        meta={"category": "docs"},
    ),
    Document(
        content="Vespa supports lexical and vector retrieval.",
        meta={"category": "docs"},
    ),
    Document(
        content="This note is about something else entirely.",
        meta={"category": "misc"},
    ),
]

document_store.write_documents(documents=documents, policy=DuplicatePolicy.OVERWRITE)

retriever = VespaKeywordRetriever(
    document_store=document_store,
    filters={"field": "meta.category", "operator": "==", "value": "docs"},
)
rag_pipeline = Pipeline()
rag_pipeline.add_component(name="retriever", instance=retriever)
rag_pipeline.add_component(
    instance=ChatPromptBuilder(
        template=prompt_template,
        required_variables={"question", "documents"},
    ),
    name="prompt_builder",
)
rag_pipeline.add_component(instance=OpenAIChatGenerator(), name="llm")
rag_pipeline.add_component(instance=AnswerBuilder(), name="answer_builder")
rag_pipeline.connect("retriever", "prompt_builder.documents")
rag_pipeline.connect("prompt_builder.prompt", "llm.messages")
rag_pipeline.connect("llm.replies", "answer_builder.replies")
rag_pipeline.connect("retriever", "answer_builder.documents")

question = "How does Haystack work with Vespa?"
result = rag_pipeline.run(
    {
        "retriever": {"query": question},
        "prompt_builder": {"question": question},
        "answer_builder": {"query": question},
    },
)
print(result["answer_builder"])
```
