Create an index

PUT /{index}
Api key auth Basic auth Bearer auth

You can use the create index API to add a new index to an Elasticsearch cluster. When creating an index, you can specify the following:

  • Settings for the index.
  • Mappings for fields in the index.
  • Index aliases

Wait for active shards

By default, index creation will only return a response to the client when the primary copies of each shard have been started, or the request times out. The index creation response will indicate what happened. For example, acknowledged indicates whether the index was successfully created in the cluster, while shards_acknowledged indicates whether the requisite number of shard copies were started for each shard in the index before timing out. Note that it is still possible for either acknowledged or shards_acknowledged to be false, but for the index creation to be successful. These values simply indicate whether the operation completed before the timeout. If acknowledged is false, the request timed out before the cluster state was updated with the newly created index, but it probably will be created sometime soon. If shards_acknowledged is false, then the request timed out before the requisite number of shards were started (by default just the primaries), even if the cluster state was successfully updated to reflect the newly created index (that is to say, acknowledged is true).

You can change the default of only waiting for the primary shards to start through the index setting index.write.wait_for_active_shards. Note that changing this setting will also affect the wait_for_active_shards value on all subsequent write operations.

Path parameters

  • index string Required

    Name of the index you wish to create.

Query parameters

  • master_timeout string

    Period to wait for a connection to the master node. If no response is received before the timeout expires, the request fails and returns an error.

  • timeout string

    Period to wait for a response. If no response is received before the timeout expires, the request fails and returns an error.

  • wait_for_active_shards number | 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).

application/json

Body

Responses

PUT /{index} 
curl \
 --request PUT http://api.example.com/{index} \
 --header "Authorization: $API_KEY" \
 --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
 --data '"{\n  \"settings\": {\n    \"number_of_shards\": 3,\n    \"number_of_replicas\": 2\n  }\n}"'
Request examples
This request specifies the `number_of_shards` and `number_of_replicas`. 
{
  "settings": {
    "number_of_shards": 3,
    "number_of_replicas": 2
  }
}
You can provide mapping definitions in the create index API requests. 
{
  "settings": {
    "number_of_shards": 1
  },
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "field1": { "type": "text" }
    }
  }
}
Response examples (200) 
{
  "index": "string",
  "shards_acknowledged": true,
  "acknowledged": true
}