Bulk API
editBulk API
editPerforms multiple indexing or delete operations in a single API call. This reduces overhead and can greatly increase indexing speed.
POST _bulk { "index" : { "_index" : "test", "_id" : "1" } } { "field1" : "value1" } { "delete" : { "_index" : "test", "_id" : "2" } } { "create" : { "_index" : "test", "_id" : "3" } } { "field1" : "value3" } { "update" : {"_id" : "1", "_index" : "test"} } { "doc" : {"field2" : "value2"} }
Description
editProvides a way to perform multiple index
, create
, delete
, and update
actions in a single request.
The actions are specified in the request body using a newline delimited JSON (NDJSON) structure:
action_and_meta_data\n optional_source\n action_and_meta_data\n optional_source\n .... action_and_meta_data\n optional_source\n
The index
and create
actions expect a source on the next line,
and have the same semantics as the op_type
parameter in the standard index API:
create fails if a document with the same name already exists in the index,
index adds or replaces a document as necessary.
update
expects that the partial doc, upsert,
and script and its options are specified on the next line.
delete
does not expect a source on the next line and
has the same semantics as the standard delete API.
The final line of data must end with a newline character \n
.
Each newline character may be preceded by a carriage return \r
.
When sending requests to the _bulk
endpoint,
the Content-Type
header should be set to application/x-ndjson
.
Because this format uses literal \n
's as delimiters,
make sure that the JSON actions and sources are not pretty printed.
If you specify an index in the request URI, it is used for any actions that don’t explicitly specify an index.
A note on the format: The idea here is to make processing of this as
fast as possible. As some of the actions are redirected to other
shards on other nodes, only action_meta_data
is parsed on the
receiving node side.
Client libraries using this protocol should try and strive to do something similar on the client side, and reduce buffering as much as possible.
The response to a bulk action is a large JSON structure with the individual results of each action performed, in the same order as the actions that appeared in the request. The failure of a single action does not affect the remaining actions.
There is no "correct" number of actions to perform in a single bulk request. Experiment with different settings to find the optimal size for your particular workload.
When using the HTTP API, make sure that the client does not send HTTP chunks, as this will slow things down.
Client support for bulk requests
editSome of the officially supported clients provide helpers to assist with bulk requests and reindexing of documents from one index to another:
Submitting bulk requests with cURL
editIf you’re providing text file input to curl
, you must use the
--data-binary
flag instead of plain -d
. The latter doesn’t preserve
newlines. Example:
$ cat requests { "index" : { "_index" : "test", "_id" : "1" } } { "field1" : "value1" } $ curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/x-ndjson" -XPOST localhost:9200/_bulk --data-binary "@requests"; echo {"took":7, "errors": false, "items":[{"index":{"_index":"test","_type":"_doc","_id":"1","_version":1,"result":"created","forced_refresh":false}}]}
Optimistic Concurrency Control
editEach index
and delete
action within a bulk API call may include the
if_seq_no
and if_primary_term
parameters in their respective action
and meta data lines. The if_seq_no
and if_primary_term
parameters control
how operations are executed, based on the last modification to existing
documents. See Optimistic concurrency control for more details.
Versioning
editEach bulk item can include the version value using the
version
field. It automatically follows the behavior of the
index / delete operation based on the _version
mapping. It also
support the version_type
(see versioning).
Routing
editEach bulk item can include the routing value using the
routing
field. It automatically follows the behavior of the
index / delete operation based on the _routing
mapping.
Wait For Active Shards
editWhen making bulk calls, you can set the wait_for_active_shards
parameter to require a minimum number of shard copies to be active
before starting to process the bulk request. See
here for further details and a usage
example.
Refresh
editControl when the changes made by this request are visible to search. See refresh.
Only the shards that receive the bulk request will be affected by
refresh
. Imagine a _bulk?refresh=wait_for
request with three
documents in it that happen to be routed to different shards in an index
with five shards. The request will only wait for those three shards to
refresh. The other two shards that make up the index do not
participate in the _bulk
request at all.
Security
editPartial responses
editTo ensure fast responses, the bulk API will respond with partial results if one or more shards fail. See Shard failures for more information.
Path parameters
edit-
<index>
- (Optional, string) Name of the index to perform the bulk actions against.
Query parameters
edit-
pipeline
- (Optional, string) ID of the pipeline to use to preprocess incoming documents.
-
refresh
-
(Optional, enum) If
true
, Elasticsearch refreshes the affected shards to make this operation visible to search, ifwait_for
then wait for a refresh to make this operation visible to search, iffalse
do nothing with refreshes. Valid values:true
,false
,wait_for
. Default:false
. -
routing
- (Optional, string) Target the specified primary shard.
-
_source
-
(Optional, string) True or false to return the
_source
field or not, or a list of fields to return. -
_source_excludes
-
(Optional, string) A list of fields to exclude from the returned
_source
field. -
_source_includes
-
(Optional, string) A list of fields to extract and return from the
_source
field. -
timeout
-
(Optional, time units) Specifies the period of time to wait for
a response. If no response is received before the timeout expires, the request
fails and returns an error. Defaults to
30s
. -
wait_for_active_shards
-
(Optional, string) The number of shard copies that must be active before proceeding with the operation. Set to
all
or any positive integer up to the total number of shards in the index (number_of_replicas+1
). Default: 1, the primary shard.See Active shards.
Examples
editPOST _bulk { "index" : { "_index" : "test", "_id" : "1" } } { "field1" : "value1" } { "delete" : { "_index" : "test", "_id" : "2" } } { "create" : { "_index" : "test", "_id" : "3" } } { "field1" : "value3" } { "update" : {"_id" : "1", "_index" : "test"} } { "doc" : {"field2" : "value2"} }
The API returns the following result:
{ "took": 30, "errors": false, "items": [ { "index": { "_index": "test", "_type": "_doc", "_id": "1", "_version": 1, "result": "created", "_shards": { "total": 2, "successful": 1, "failed": 0 }, "status": 201, "_seq_no" : 0, "_primary_term": 1 } }, { "delete": { "_index": "test", "_type": "_doc", "_id": "2", "_version": 1, "result": "not_found", "_shards": { "total": 2, "successful": 1, "failed": 0 }, "status": 404, "_seq_no" : 1, "_primary_term" : 2 } }, { "create": { "_index": "test", "_type": "_doc", "_id": "3", "_version": 1, "result": "created", "_shards": { "total": 2, "successful": 1, "failed": 0 }, "status": 201, "_seq_no" : 2, "_primary_term" : 3 } }, { "update": { "_index": "test", "_type": "_doc", "_id": "1", "_version": 2, "result": "updated", "_shards": { "total": 2, "successful": 1, "failed": 0 }, "status": 200, "_seq_no" : 3, "_primary_term" : 4 } } ] }
Bulk update example
editWhen using the update
action, retry_on_conflict
can be used as a field in
the action itself (not in the extra payload line), to specify how many
times an update should be retried in the case of a version conflict.
The update
action payload supports the following options: doc
(partial document), upsert
, doc_as_upsert
, script
, params
(for
script), lang
(for script), and _source
. See update documentation for details on
the options. Example with update actions:
POST _bulk { "update" : {"_id" : "1", "_index" : "index1", "retry_on_conflict" : 3} } { "doc" : {"field" : "value"} } { "update" : { "_id" : "0", "_index" : "index1", "retry_on_conflict" : 3} } { "script" : { "source": "ctx._source.counter += params.param1", "lang" : "painless", "params" : {"param1" : 1}}, "upsert" : {"counter" : 1}} { "update" : {"_id" : "2", "_index" : "index1", "retry_on_conflict" : 3} } { "doc" : {"field" : "value"}, "doc_as_upsert" : true } { "update" : {"_id" : "3", "_index" : "index1", "_source" : true} } { "doc" : {"field" : "value"} } { "update" : {"_id" : "4", "_index" : "index1"} } { "doc" : {"field" : "value"}, "_source": true}