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Bulk

Introduced 1.0

The bulk operation lets you add, update, or delete many documents in a single request. Compared to individual OpenSearch indexing requests, the bulk operation has significant performance benefits. Whenever practical, we recommend batching indexing operations into bulk requests.

Example

POST _bulk
{ "delete": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt2229499" } }
{ "index": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt1979320" } }
{ "title": "Rush", "year": 2013 }
{ "create": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt1392214" } }
{ "title": "Prisoners", "year": 2013 }
{ "update": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt0816711" } }
{ "doc" : { "title": "World War Z" } }

Path and HTTP methods

POST _bulk
POST <index>/_bulk

Specifying the index in the path means you don’t need to include it in the request body.

OpenSearch also accepts PUT requests to the _bulk path, but we highly recommend using POST. The accepted usage of PUT—adding or replacing a single resource at a given path—doesn’t make sense for bulk requests.

URL parameters

All bulk URL parameters are optional.

Request body

The bulk request body follows this pattern:

Action and metadata\n
Optional document\n
Action and metadata\n
Optional document\n

The optional JSON document doesn’t need to be minified—spaces are fine—but it does need to be on a single line. OpenSearch uses newline characters to parse bulk requests and requires that the request body end with a newline character.

All actions support the same metadata: _index, _id, and _require_alias. If you don’t provide an ID, OpenSearch generates one automatically, which can make it challenging to update the document at a later time.

• Create

  Creates a document if it doesn’t already exist and returns an error otherwise. The next line must include a JSON document.

  { "create": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt1392214" } }
  { "title": "Prisoners", "year": 2013 }
  

• Delete

  This action deletes a document if it exists. If the document doesn’t exist, OpenSearch doesn’t return an error, but instead returns not_found under result. Delete actions don’t require documents on the next line.

  { "delete": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt2229499" } }
  

• Index

  Index actions create a document if it doesn’t yet exist and replace the document if it already exists. The next line must include a JSON document.

  { "index": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt1979320" } }
  { "title": "Rush", "year": 2013}
  

• Update

  This action updates existing documents and returns an error if the document doesn’t exist. The next line must include a full or partial JSON document, depending on how much of the document you want to update.

  { "update": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt0816711" } }
  { "doc" : { "title": "World War Z" } }
  

  It can also include a script or upsert for more complex document updates.

  • Script

    { "update": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt0816711" } }
    { "script" : { "source": "ctx._source.title = \"World War Z\"" } }
    

  • Upsert

    { "update": { "_index": "movies", "_id": "tt0816711" } }
    { "doc" : { "title": "World War Z" }, "doc_as_upsert": true }
    

Response

In the response, pay particular attention to the top-level errors boolean. If true, you can iterate over the individual actions for more detailed information.

{
  "took": 11,
  "errors": true,
  "items": [
    {
      "index": {
        "_index": "movies",
        "_id": "tt1979320",
        "_version": 1,
        "result": "created",
        "_shards": {
          "total": 2,
          "successful": 1,
          "failed": 0
        },
        "_seq_no": 1,
        "_primary_term": 1,
        "status": 201
      }
    },
    {
      "create": {
        "_index": "movies",
        "_id": "tt1392214",
        "status": 409,
        "error": {
          "type": "version_conflict_engine_exception",
          "reason": "[tt1392214]: version conflict, document already exists (current version [1])",
          "index": "movies",
          "shard": "0",
          "index_uuid": "yhizhusbSWmP0G7OJnmcLg"
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "update": {
        "_index": "movies",
        "_id": "tt0816711",
        "status": 404,
        "error": {
          "type": "document_missing_exception",
          "reason": "[_doc][tt0816711]: document missing",
          "index": "movies",
          "shard": "0",
          "index_uuid": "yhizhusbSWmP0G7OJnmcLg"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}