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Elastic Docs ›Java API [1.5] ›Update API
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Upsertedit

There is also support for upsert. If the document does not already exists, the content of the upsert element will be used to index the fresh doc:

IndexRequest indexRequest = new IndexRequest("index", "type", "1")
        .source(jsonBuilder()
            .startObject()
                .field("name", "Joe Smith")
                .field("gender", "male")
            .endObject());
UpdateRequest updateRequest = new UpdateRequest("index", "type", "1")
        .doc(jsonBuilder()
            .startObject()
                .field("gender", "male")
            .endObject())
        .upsert(indexRequest);              
client.update(updateRequest).get();

If the document does not exist, the one in indexRequest will be added

If the document index/type/1 already exists, we will have after this operation a document like:

{
    "name"  : "Joe Dalton",
    "gender": "male"        
}

This field is added by the update request

If it does not exist, we will have a new document:

{
    "name" : "Joe Smith",
    "gender": "male"
}
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