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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Guide [7.6] ›REST APIs ›Index APIs
« Update index alias API Index lifecycle management API »

Update index settings APIedit

Changes an index setting in real time.

PUT /twitter/_settings
{
    "index" : {
        "number_of_replicas" : 2
    }
}

Requestedit

PUT /<index>/_settings

Path parametersedit

<index>

(Optional, string) Comma-separated list or wildcard expression of index names used to limit the request.

To update a setting for all indices, use _all or exclude this parameter.

Query parametersedit

allow_no_indices

(Optional, boolean) If true, the request does not return an error if a wildcard expression or _all value retrieves only missing or closed indices.

This parameter also applies to index aliases that point to a missing or closed index.

Defaults to false.

expand_wildcards

(Optional, string) Controls what kind of indices that wildcard expressions can expand to. Valid values are:

all
Expand to open and closed indices.
open
Expand only to open indices.
closed
Expand only to closed indices.
none
Wildcard expressions are not accepted.

Defaults to open.

flat_settings
(Optional, boolean) If true, returns settings in flat format. Defaults to false.
ignore_unavailable
(Optional, boolean) If true, missing or closed indices are not included in the response. Defaults to false.
preserve_existing
(Optional, boolean) If true, existing index settings remain unchanged. Defaults to false.
master_timeout
(Optional, time units) Specifies the period of time 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. Defaults to 30s.
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.

Request bodyedit

settings
(Optional, index setting object) Configuration options for the index. See Index Settings.

Examplesedit

Reset an index settingedit

To revert a setting to the default value, use null. For example:

PUT /twitter/_settings
{
    "index" : {
        "refresh_interval" : null
    }
}

The list of per-index settings which can be updated dynamically on live indices can be found in Index modules. To preserve existing settings from being updated, the preserve_existing request parameter can be set to true.

Bulk indexing usageedit

For example, the update settings API can be used to dynamically change the index from being more performant for bulk indexing, and then move it to more real time indexing state. Before the bulk indexing is started, use:

PUT /twitter/_settings
{
    "index" : {
        "refresh_interval" : "-1"
    }
}

(Another optimization option is to start the index without any replicas, and only later adding them, but that really depends on the use case).

Then, once bulk indexing is done, the settings can be updated (back to the defaults for example):

PUT /twitter/_settings
{
    "index" : {
        "refresh_interval" : "1s"
    }
}

And, a force merge should be called:

POST /twitter/_forcemerge?max_num_segments=5

Update index analysisedit

You can only define new analyzers on closed indices.

To add an analyzer, you must close the index, define the analyzer, and reopen the index. For example, the following commands add the content analyzer to myindex:

POST /twitter/_close

PUT /twitter/_settings
{
  "analysis" : {
    "analyzer":{
      "content":{
        "type":"custom",
        "tokenizer":"whitespace"
      }
    }
  }
}

POST /twitter/_open
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