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Index aliases

An alias is a virtual index name that can point to one or more indexes.

If your data is spread across multiple indexes, rather than keeping track of which indexes to query, you can create an alias and query it instead.

For example, if you’re storing logs into indexes based on the month and you frequently query the logs for the previous two months, you can create a last_2_months alias and update the indexes it points to each month.

Because you can change the indexes an alias points to at any time, referring to indexes using aliases in your applications allows you to reindex your data without any downtime.

Table of contents

  1. Create aliases
  2. Add or remove indexes
  3. Manage aliases
  4. Add aliases at index creation
  5. Create filtered aliases
  6. Index alias options
  7. Delete aliases

Create aliases

To create an alias, use a POST request:

POST _aliases

Use the actions method to specify the list of actions that you want to perform. This command creates an alias named alias1 and adds index-1 to this alias:

POST _aliases
{
  "actions": [
    {
      "add": {
        "index": "index-1",
        "alias": "alias1"
      }
    }
  ]
}

You should see the following response:

{
   "acknowledged": true
}

If this request fails, make sure the index that you’re adding to the alias already exists.

You can also create an alias using one of the following requests:

PUT <index>/_aliases/<alias name>
POST <index>/_aliases/<alias name>
PUT <index>/_alias/<alias name>
POST <index>/_alias/<alias name>

The <index> in the above requests can be an index name, a comma-separated list of index names, or a wildcard expression. Use _all to refer to all indexes.

To check if alias1 refers to index-1, run one of the following commands:

GET /_alias/alias1
GET /index-1/_alias/alias1

To get the mappings and settings information of the indexes that the alias references, run the following command:

GET alias1

Add or remove indexes

You can perform multiple actions in the same _aliases operation. For example, the following command removes index-1 and adds index-2 to alias1:

POST _aliases
{
  "actions": [
    {
      "remove": {
        "index": "index-1",
        "alias": "alias1"
      }
    },
    {
      "add": {
        "index": "index-2",
        "alias": "alias1"
      }
    }
  ]
}

The add and remove actions occur atomically, which means that at no point will alias1 point to both index-1 and index-2.

You can also add indexes based on an index pattern:

POST _aliases
{
  "actions": [
    {
      "add": {
        "index": "index*",
        "alias": "alias1"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Manage aliases

To list the mapping of aliases to indexes, run the following command:

GET _cat/aliases?v

Example response

alias     index   filter    routing.index   routing.search
alias1    index-1   *             -                 -

To check which indexes an alias points to, run the following command:

GET _alias/alias1

Example response

{
  "index-2": {
    "aliases": {
      "alias1": {}
    }
  }
}

Conversely, to find which alias points to a specific index, run the following command:

GET /index-2/_alias/*

To get all index names and their aliases, run the following command:

GET /_alias

To check if an alias exists, run one of the following commands:

HEAD /alias1/_alias/
HEAD /_alias/alias1/
HEAD index-1/_alias/alias1/

Add aliases at index creation

You can add an index to an alias as you create the index:

PUT index-1
{
  "aliases": {
    "alias1": {}
  }
}

Create filtered aliases

You can create a filtered alias to access a subset of documents or fields from the underlying indexes.

This command adds only a specific timestamp field to alias1:

POST _aliases
{
  "actions": [
    {
      "add": {
        "index": "index-1",
        "alias": "alias1",
        "filter": {
          "term": {
            "timestamp": "1574641891142"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

Index alias options

You can specify the options shown in the following table.

Option Valid values Description Required
index String The name of the index that the alias points to. Yes
alias String The name of the alias. No
filter Object Add a filter to the alias. No
routing String Limit search to an associated shard value. You can specify search_routing and index_routing independently. No
is_write_index String Specify the index that accepts any write operations to the alias. If this value is not specified, then no write operations are allowed. No

Delete aliases

To delete one or more aliases from an index, use the following request:

DELETE <index>/_alias/<alias>
DELETE <index>/_aliases/<alias>

Both <index> and <alias> in the above request support comma-separated lists and wildcard expressions. Use _all in place of <alias> to delete all aliases for the indexes listed in <index>.

For example, if alias1 refers to index-1 and index-2, you can run the following command to remove alias1 from index-1:

DELETE index-1/_alias/alias1

After you run the request above, alias1 no longer refers to index-1, but still refers to index-2.

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