This section describes how to instantiate a client and have it connect to the server.

Choosing the right connection strategyedit

NEST follows pretty much the same design as Elasticsearch.Net when it comes to choosing the right connection strategy

var client = new ElasticClient();

will create a non failover client that talks to http://localhost:9200.

var uri = new Uri("http://mynode.somewhere.com/");
var settings = new ConnectionSettings(uri, defaultIndex: "my-application");

This will create a non-failover client that talks with http://mynode.somewhere.com and uses the default index name my-application for calls which do not explicitly state an index name. Specifying a default index is optional but [very handy](/nest/type-index-inference).

If you want a failover client, instead of passing a Uri, pass an IConnectionPool. See the Elasticsearch.Net documentation on cluster failover. All of its implementations can also be used with NEST.

Changing the underlying connectionedit

By default NEST will use HTTP to chat with Elasticsearch, alternative implementation of the transport layer can be injected using the constructors optional second parameter:

var client = new ElasticClient(settings, new ThriftConnection(settings));

NEST comes with an Http Connection HttpConnection, Thrift Connection ThriftConnection and an In-Memory Connection InMemoryConnection, that nevers hits Elasticsearch.

You can also roll your own connection if desired by implementing the IConnection interface.

Subclassing existing connection implementationsedit

In addition to implementing your own IConnection, the existing HttpConnection and ThriftConnection are extensible and can be subclassed in order to modify or extend their behavior.

For instance, a common use case is the ability to add client certificates to web requests. You can subclass HttpConnection and override the CreateHttpWebRequest method that creates the web request, and add certificates to it like so:

public class SignedHttpConnection : HttpConnection
{
    private readonly X509CertificateCollection _certificates;

    public SignedHttpConnection(IConnectionConfigurationValues settings, X509CertificateCollection certificates)
        : base(settings)
    {
        _certificates = certificates;
    }

    protected override HttpWebRequest CreateHttpWebRequest(Uri uri, string method, byte[] data, IRequestConfiguration requestSpecificConfig)
    {
        var request = base.CreateHttpWebRequest(uri, method, data, requestSpecificConfig);
        request.ClientCertificates = _certificates;
        return request;
    }
}

Settingsedit

The NEST client can be configured by passing in an IConnectionSettingsValues object, which is a sub-interface of Elasticsearch.Net's IConnectionConfigurationValues. Therefore all of the settings that can be used to configure Elasticsearch.Net also apply here, including the cluster failover settings.

The easiest way to pass IConnectionSettingsValues is to instantiate ConnectionSettings is:

var settings = new ConnectionSettings(
        myConnectionPool,
        defaultIndex: "my-application"
    )
    .PluralizeTypeNames();

IConnectionSettingsValues has the following options:

settings.AddContractJsonConverters(t =>
    typeof (Enum).IsAssignableFrom(t)
        ? new StringEnumConverter()
        : null);