Get API

GET <index>/_doc/<_id>

HEAD <index>/_doc/<_id>

GET <index>/_source/<_id>

HEAD <index>/_source/<_id>

You use GET to retrieve a document and its source or stored fields from a particular index. Use HEAD to verify that a document exists. You can use the _source resource retrieve just the document source or verify that it exists.

By default, the get API is realtime, and is not affected by the refresh rate of the index (when data will become visible for search). If a document has been updated but is not yet refreshed, the get API will issue a refresh call in-place to make the document visible. This will also make other documents changed since the last refresh visible. In order to disable realtime GET, one can set the realtime parameter to false.

By default, the get operation returns the contents of the _source field unless you have used the stored_fields parameter or if the _source field is disabled. You can turn off _source retrieval by using the _source parameter:

GET twitter/_doc/0?_source=false

If you only need one or two fields from the _source, use the _source_includes or _source_excludes parameters to include or filter out particular fields. This can be especially helpful with large documents where partial retrieval can save on network overhead. Both parameters take a comma separated list of fields or wildcard expressions. Example:

GET twitter/_doc/0?_source_includes=*.id&_source_excludes=entities

If you only want to specify includes, you can use a shorter notation:

GET twitter/_doc/0?_source=*.id,retweeted

If routing is used during indexing, the routing value also needs to be specified to retrieve a document. For example:

GET twitter/_doc/2?routing=user1

This request gets the tweet with id 2, but it is routed based on the user. The document is not fetched if the correct routing is not specified.

Controls a preference of which shard replicas to execute the get request on. By default, the operation is randomized between the shard replicas.

The preference can be set to:

The refresh parameter can be set to true in order to refresh the relevant shard before the get operation and make it searchable. Setting it to true should be done after careful thought and verification that this does not cause a heavy load on the system (and slows down indexing).

The get operation gets hashed into a specific shard id. It then gets redirected to one of the replicas within that shard id and returns the result. The replicas are the primary shard and its replicas within that shard id group. This means that the more replicas we have, the better GET scaling we will have.

You can use the version parameter to retrieve the document only if its current version is equal to the specified one.

Internally, Elasticsearch has marked the old document as deleted and added an entirely new document. The old version of the document doesn’t disappear immediately, although you won’t be able to access it. Elasticsearch cleans up deleted documents in the background as you continue to index more data.

Retrieve the JSON document with the _id 0 from the twitter index:

GET twitter/_doc/0

The API returns the following result:

{
    "_index" : "twitter",
    "_type" : "_doc",
    "_id" : "0",
    "_version" : 1,
    "_seq_no" : 10,
    "_primary_term" : 1,
    "found": true,
    "_source" : {
        "user" : "kimchy",
        "date" : "2009-11-15T14:12:12",
        "likes": 0,
        "message" : "trying out Elasticsearch"
    }
}

Check to see if a document with the _id 0 exists:

HEAD twitter/_doc/0

Elasticsearch returns a status code of 200 - OK if the document exists, or 404 - Not Found if it doesn’t.

Use the <index>/_source/<id> resource to get just the _source field of a document. For example:

GET twitter/_source/1

You can use the source filtering parameters to control which parts of the _source are returned:

GET twitter/_source/1/?_source_includes=*.id&_source_excludes=entities

You can use HEAD with the _source endpoint to efficiently test whether or not the document _source exists. A document’s source is not available if it is disabled in the mapping.

HEAD twitter/_source/1

Use the stored_fields parameter to specify the set of stored fields you want to retrieve. Any requested fields that are not stored are ignored. Consider for instance the following mapping:

PUT twitter
{
   "mappings": {
       "properties": {
          "counter": {
             "type": "integer",
             "store": false
          },
          "tags": {
             "type": "keyword",
             "store": true
          }
       }
   }
}

Now we can add a document:

PUT twitter/_doc/1
{
    "counter" : 1,
    "tags" : ["red"]
}

And then try to retrieve it:

GET twitter/_doc/1?stored_fields=tags,counter

The API returns the following result:

{
   "_index": "twitter",
   "_type": "_doc",
   "_id": "1",
   "_version": 1,
   "_seq_no" : 22,
   "_primary_term" : 1,
   "found": true,
   "fields": {
      "tags": [
         "red"
      ]
   }
}

Field values fetched from the document itself are always returned as an array. Since the counter field is not stored, the get request ignores it.

You can also retrieve metadata fields like the _routing field:

PUT twitter/_doc/2?routing=user1
{
    "counter" : 1,
    "tags" : ["white"]
}

GET twitter/_doc/2?routing=user1&stored_fields=tags,counter

The API returns the following result:

{
   "_index": "twitter",
   "_type": "_doc",
   "_id": "2",
   "_version": 1,
   "_seq_no" : 13,
   "_primary_term" : 1,
   "_routing": "user1",
   "found": true,
   "fields": {
      "tags": [
         "white"
      ]
   }
}

Only leaf fields can be retrieved with the stored_field option. Object fields can’t be returned—​if specified, the request fails.