Create a new document in the index
Added in 5.0.0
You can index a new JSON document with the /<target>/_doc/ or /<target>/_create/<_id> APIs
Using _create guarantees that the document is indexed only if it does not already exist.
It returns a 409 response when a document with a same ID already exists in the index.
To update an existing document, you must use the /<target>/_doc/ API.
If the Elasticsearch security features are enabled, you must have the following index privileges for the target data stream, index, or index alias:
- To add a document using the
PUT /<target>/_create/<_id>orPOST /<target>/_create/<_id>request formats, you must have thecreate_doc,create,index, orwriteindex privilege. - To automatically create a data stream or index with this API request, you must have the
auto_configure,create_index, ormanageindex privilege.
Automatic data stream creation requires a matching index template with data stream enabled.
Automatically create data streams and indices
If the request's target doesn't exist and matches an index template with a data_stream definition, the index operation automatically creates the data stream.
If the target doesn't exist and doesn't match a data stream template, the operation automatically creates the index and applies any matching index templates.
NOTE: Elasticsearch includes several built-in index templates. To avoid naming collisions with these templates, refer to index pattern documentation.
If no mapping exists, the index operation creates a dynamic mapping. By default, new fields and objects are automatically added to the mapping if needed.
Automatic index creation is controlled by the action.auto_create_index setting.
If it is true, any index can be created automatically.
You can modify this setting to explicitly allow or block automatic creation of indices that match specified patterns or set it to false to turn off automatic index creation entirely.
Specify a comma-separated list of patterns you want to allow or prefix each pattern with + or - to indicate whether it should be allowed or blocked.
When a list is specified, the default behaviour is to disallow.
NOTE: The action.auto_create_index setting affects the automatic creation of indices only.
It does not affect the creation of data streams.
Routing
By default, shard placement — or routing — is controlled by using a hash of the document's ID value.
For more explicit control, the value fed into the hash function used by the router can be directly specified on a per-operation basis using the routing parameter.
When setting up explicit mapping, you can also use the _routing field to direct the index operation to extract the routing value from the document itself.
This does come at the (very minimal) cost of an additional document parsing pass.
If the _routing mapping is defined and set to be required, the index operation will fail if no routing value is provided or extracted.
NOTE: Data streams do not support custom routing unless they were created with the allow_custom_routing setting enabled in the template.
Distributed
The index operation is directed to the primary shard based on its route and performed on the actual node containing this shard. After the primary shard completes the operation, if needed, the update is distributed to applicable replicas.
Active shards
To improve the resiliency of writes to the system, indexing operations can be configured to wait for a certain number of active shard copies before proceeding with the operation.
If the requisite number of active shard copies are not available, then the write operation must wait and retry, until either the requisite shard copies have started or a timeout occurs.
By default, write operations only wait for the primary shards to be active before proceeding (that is to say wait_for_active_shards is 1).
This default can be overridden in the index settings dynamically by setting index.write.wait_for_active_shards.
To alter this behavior per operation, use the wait_for_active_shards request parameter.
Valid values are all or any positive integer up to the total number of configured copies per shard in the index (which is number_of_replicas+1).
Specifying a negative value or a number greater than the number of shard copies will throw an error.
For example, suppose you have a cluster of three nodes, A, B, and C and you create an index index with the number of replicas set to 3 (resulting in 4 shard copies, one more copy than there are nodes).
If you attempt an indexing operation, by default the operation will only ensure the primary copy of each shard is available before proceeding.
This means that even if B and C went down and A hosted the primary shard copies, the indexing operation would still proceed with only one copy of the data.
If wait_for_active_shards is set on the request to 3 (and all three nodes are up), the indexing operation will require 3 active shard copies before proceeding.
This requirement should be met because there are 3 active nodes in the cluster, each one holding a copy of the shard.
However, if you set wait_for_active_shards to all (or to 4, which is the same in this situation), the indexing operation will not proceed as you do not have all 4 copies of each shard active in the index.
The operation will timeout unless a new node is brought up in the cluster to host the fourth copy of the shard.
It is important to note that this setting greatly reduces the chances of the write operation not writing to the requisite number of shard copies, but it does not completely eliminate the possibility, because this check occurs before the write operation starts.
After the write operation is underway, it is still possible for replication to fail on any number of shard copies but still succeed on the primary.
The _shards section of the API response reveals the number of shard copies on which replication succeeded and failed.
Path parameters
-
index
string Required The name of the data stream or index to target. If the target doesn't exist and matches the name or wildcard (
*) pattern of an index template with adata_streamdefinition, this request creates the data stream. If the target doesn't exist and doesn’t match a data stream template, this request creates the index. -
id
string Required A unique identifier for the document. To automatically generate a document ID, use the
POST /<target>/_doc/request format.
Query parameters
-
if_primary_term
number Only perform the operation if the document has this primary term.
-
if_seq_no
number Only perform the operation if the document has this sequence number.
-
include_source_on_error
boolean True or false if to include the document source in the error message in case of parsing errors.
-
op_type
string Set to
createto only index the document if it does not already exist (put if absent). If a document with the specified_idalready exists, the indexing operation will fail. The behavior is the same as using the<index>/_createendpoint. If a document ID is specified, this paramater defaults toindex. Otherwise, it defaults tocreate. If the request targets a data stream, anop_typeofcreateis required.Supported values include:
index: Overwrite any documents that already exist.create: Only index documents that do not already exist.
Values are
indexorcreate. -
pipeline
string The ID of the pipeline to use to preprocess incoming documents. If the index has a default ingest pipeline specified, setting the value to
_noneturns off the default ingest pipeline for this request. If a final pipeline is configured, it will always run regardless of the value of this parameter. -
refresh
string If
true, Elasticsearch refreshes the affected shards to make this operation visible to search. Ifwait_for, it waits for a refresh to make this operation visible to search. Iffalse, it does nothing with refreshes.Values are
true,false, orwait_for. -
require_alias
boolean If
true, the destination must be an index alias. -
require_data_stream
boolean If
true, the request's actions must target a data stream (existing or to be created). -
routing
string A custom value that is used to route operations to a specific shard.
-
timeout
string The period the request waits for the following operations: automatic index creation, dynamic mapping updates, waiting for active shards. Elasticsearch waits for at least the specified timeout period before failing. The actual wait time could be longer, particularly when multiple waits occur.
This parameter is useful for situations where the primary shard assigned to perform the operation might not be available when the operation runs. Some reasons for this might be that the primary shard is currently recovering from a gateway or undergoing relocation. By default, the operation will wait on the primary shard to become available for at least 1 minute before failing and responding with an error. The actual wait time could be longer, particularly when multiple waits occur.
Values are
-1or0. -
version
number The explicit version number for concurrency control. It must be a non-negative long number.
-
version_type
string The version type.
Supported values include:
internal: Use internal versioning that starts at 1 and increments with each update or delete.external: Only index the document if the specified version is strictly higher than the version of the stored document or if there is no existing document.external_gte: Only index the document if the specified version is equal or higher than the version of the stored document or if there is no existing document. NOTE: Theexternal_gteversion type is meant for special use cases and should be used with care. If used incorrectly, it can result in loss of data.force: This option is deprecated because it can cause primary and replica shards to diverge.
Values are
internal,external,external_gte, orforce. -
wait_for_active_shards
number | string The number of shard copies that must be active before proceeding with the operation. You can set it to
allor any positive integer up to the total number of shards in the index (number_of_replicas+1). The default value of1means it waits for each primary shard to be active.Values are
allorindex-setting.
curl \
--request PUT 'http://api.example.com/{index}/_create/{id}' \
--header "Authorization: $API_KEY" \
--header "Content-Type: application/json" \
--data '"{\n \"@timestamp\": \"2099-11-15T13:12:00\",\n \"message\": \"GET /search HTTP/1.1 200 1070000\",\n \"user\": {\n \"id\": \"kimchy\"\n }\n}"'{
"@timestamp": "2099-11-15T13:12:00",
"message": "GET /search HTTP/1.1 200 1070000",
"user": {
"id": "kimchy"
}
}