Create or update an index template

POST /_template/{name}

Index templates define settings, mappings, and aliases that can be applied automatically to new indices. Elasticsearch applies templates to new indices based on an index pattern that matches the index name.

IMPORTANT: This documentation is about legacy index templates, which are deprecated and will be replaced by the composable templates introduced in Elasticsearch 7.8.

Composable templates always take precedence over legacy templates. If no composable template matches a new index, matching legacy templates are applied according to their order.

Index templates are only applied during index creation. Changes to index templates do not affect existing indices. Settings and mappings specified in create index API requests override any settings or mappings specified in an index template.

External documentation

Path parameters

  • name string Required

    The name of the template

Query parameters

  • create boolean

    If true, this request cannot replace or update existing index templates.

  • master_timeout string

    Period 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.

  • order number

    Order in which Elasticsearch applies this template if index matches multiple templates.

    Templates with lower 'order' values are merged first. Templates with higher 'order' values are merged later, overriding templates with lower values.

  • cause string
application/json

Body Required

  • aliases object

    Aliases for the index.

    Hide aliases attribute Show aliases attribute object

  • index_patterns string | array[string]

    Array of wildcard expressions used to match the names of indices during creation.

    One of:
    string-1 string array-2 array[string]
  • mappings object

    Additional properties are allowed.

    Hide mappings attributes Show mappings attributes object
  • order number

    Order in which Elasticsearch applies this template if index matches multiple templates.

    Templates with lower 'order' values are merged first. Templates with higher 'order' values are merged later, overriding templates with lower values.

  • settings object Additional properties

    Additional properties are allowed.

    Hide settings attributes Show settings attributes object
    • index object Additional properties

      Additional properties are allowed.

    • mode string

    • routing_path string | array[string]

      One of:
      string-1 string array-2 array[string]
    • soft_deletes object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide soft_deletes attributes Show soft_deletes attributes object
      • enabled boolean

        Indicates whether soft deletes are enabled on the index.

      • retention_lease object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide retention_lease attribute Show retention_lease attribute object
        • period string Required

          A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

    • sort object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide sort attributes Show sort attributes object

    • number_of_shards number | string

      One of:
      number-1 number string-2 string

    • number_of_replicas number | string

      One of:
      number-1 number string-2 string
    • number_of_routing_shards number
    • check_on_startup string

      Values are true, false, or checksum.

    • codec string

    • routing_partition_size number | string

      Some APIs will return values such as numbers also as a string (notably epoch timestamps). This behavior is used to capture this behavior while keeping the semantics of the field type.

      Depending on the target language, code generators can keep the union or remove it and leniently parse strings to the target type.

      One of:
      _spec_utils:Stringifiedinteger number _spec_utils:Stringifiedinteger string
    • load_fixed_bitset_filters_eagerly boolean

    • hidden boolean | string

      One of:
      boolean-1 boolean string-2 string
    • auto_expand_replicas string
    • merge object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide merge attribute Show merge attribute object
    • search object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide search attributes Show search attributes object
      • idle object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide idle attribute Show idle attribute object
        • after string

          A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

      • slowlog object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide slowlog attributes Show slowlog attributes object
        • level string
        • source number
        • reformat boolean
        • threshold object

          Additional properties are allowed.

          Hide threshold attributes Show threshold attributes object
          • query object

            Additional properties are allowed.

            Hide query attributes Show query attributes object
            • warn string

              A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

            • info string

              A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

            • debug string

              A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

            • trace string

              A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

          • fetch object

            Additional properties are allowed.

            Hide fetch attributes Show fetch attributes object
            • warn string

              A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

            • info string

              A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

            • debug string

              A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

            • trace string

              A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

    • refresh_interval string

      A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

    • max_result_window number
    • max_inner_result_window number
    • max_rescore_window number
    • max_docvalue_fields_search number
    • max_script_fields number
    • max_ngram_diff number
    • max_shingle_diff number
    • blocks object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide blocks attributes Show blocks attributes object
    • max_refresh_listeners number
    • analyze object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide analyze attribute Show analyze attribute object
    • highlight object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide highlight attribute Show highlight attribute object
    • max_terms_count number
    • max_regex_length number
    • routing object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide routing attributes Show routing attributes object
    • gc_deletes string

      A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

    • default_pipeline string
    • final_pipeline string
    • lifecycle object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide lifecycle attributes Show lifecycle attributes object
      • name string

      • indexing_complete boolean | string

        Some APIs will return values such as numbers also as a string (notably epoch timestamps). This behavior is used to capture this behavior while keeping the semantics of the field type.

        Depending on the target language, code generators can keep the union or remove it and leniently parse strings to the target type.

        One of:
        _spec_utils:Stringifiedboolean boolean _spec_utils:Stringifiedboolean string
      • origination_date number

        If specified, this is the timestamp used to calculate the index age for its phase transitions. Use this setting if you create a new index that contains old data and want to use the original creation date to calculate the index age. Specified as a Unix epoch value in milliseconds.

      • parse_origination_date boolean

        Set to true to parse the origination date from the index name. This origination date is used to calculate the index age for its phase transitions. The index name must match the pattern .*-{date_format}-\d+, where the date_format is yyyy.MM.dd and the trailing digits are optional. An index that was rolled over would normally match the full format, for example logs-2016.10.31-000002). If the index name doesn’t match the pattern, index creation fails.

      • step object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide step attribute Show step attribute object
        • wait_time_threshold string

          A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

      • rollover_alias string

        The index alias to update when the index rolls over. Specify when using a policy that contains a rollover action. When the index rolls over, the alias is updated to reflect that the index is no longer the write index. For more information about rolling indices, see Rollover.

    • provided_name string

    • creation_date number | string

      Some APIs will return values such as numbers also as a string (notably epoch timestamps). This behavior is used to capture this behavior while keeping the semantics of the field type.

      Depending on the target language, code generators can keep the union or remove it and leniently parse strings to the target type.

      One of:
      _types:UnitMillis number _spec_utils:StringifiedEpochTimeUnitMillis string

      Time unit for milliseconds

    • creation_date_string string | number

      A date and time, either as a string whose format can depend on the context (defaulting to ISO 8601), or a number of milliseconds since the Epoch. Elasticsearch accepts both as input, but will generally output a string representation.

      One of:
      _types:DateTime string _types:UnitMillis number

      Time unit for milliseconds

    • uuid string
    • version object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide version attributes Show version attributes object

    • verified_before_close boolean | string

      One of:
      boolean-1 boolean string-2 string

    • format string | number

      One of:
      string-1 string number-2 number
    • max_slices_per_scroll number
    • translog object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide translog attributes Show translog attributes object
    • query_string object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide query_string attribute Show query_string attribute object

    • priority number | string

      One of:
      number-1 number string-2 string
    • top_metrics_max_size number
    • analysis object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide analysis attributes Show analysis attributes object
    • settings object Additional properties

      Additional properties are allowed.

    • time_series object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide time_series attributes Show time_series attributes object
    • queries object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide queries attribute Show queries attribute object
      • cache object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide cache attribute Show cache attribute object
    • similarity object

      Configure custom similarity settings to customize how search results are scored.

    • mapping object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide mapping attributes Show mapping attributes object
      • coerce boolean
      • total_fields object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide total_fields attributes Show total_fields attributes object

        • limit number | string

          The maximum number of fields in an index. Field and object mappings, as well as field aliases count towards this limit. The limit is in place to prevent mappings and searches from becoming too large. Higher values can lead to performance degradations and memory issues, especially in clusters with a high load or few resources.

          One of:
          number-1 number string-2 string

        • ignore_dynamic_beyond_limit boolean | string

          This setting determines what happens when a dynamically mapped field would exceed the total fields limit. When set to false (the default), the index request of the document that tries to add a dynamic field to the mapping will fail with the message Limit of total fields [X] has been exceeded. When set to true, the index request will not fail. Instead, fields that would exceed the limit are not added to the mapping, similar to dynamic: false. The fields that were not added to the mapping will be added to the _ignored field.

          One of:
          boolean-1 boolean string-2 string
      • depth object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide depth attribute Show depth attribute object
        • limit number

          The maximum depth for a field, which is measured as the number of inner objects. For instance, if all fields are defined at the root object level, then the depth is 1. If there is one object mapping, then the depth is 2, etc.

      • nested_fields object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide nested_fields attribute Show nested_fields attribute object
        • limit number

          The maximum number of distinct nested mappings in an index. The nested type should only be used in special cases, when arrays of objects need to be queried independently of each other. To safeguard against poorly designed mappings, this setting limits the number of unique nested types per index.

      • nested_objects object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide nested_objects attribute Show nested_objects attribute object
        • limit number

          The maximum number of nested JSON objects that a single document can contain across all nested types. This limit helps to prevent out of memory errors when a document contains too many nested objects.

      • field_name_length object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide field_name_length attribute Show field_name_length attribute object
        • limit number

          Setting for the maximum length of a field name. This setting isn’t really something that addresses mappings explosion but might still be useful if you want to limit the field length. It usually shouldn’t be necessary to set this setting. The default is okay unless a user starts to add a huge number of fields with really long names. Default is Long.MAX_VALUE (no limit).

      • dimension_fields object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide dimension_fields attribute Show dimension_fields attribute object
        • limit number

          [preview] This functionality is in technical preview and may be changed or removed in a future release. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but features in technical preview are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.

      • ignore_malformed boolean
    • indexing.slowlog object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide indexing.slowlog attributes Show indexing.slowlog attributes object
      • level string
      • source number
      • reformat boolean
      • threshold object

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide threshold attribute Show threshold attribute object
        • index object

          Additional properties are allowed.

          Hide index attributes Show index attributes object
          • warn string

            A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

          • info string

            A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

          • debug string

            A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

          • trace string

            A duration. Units can be nanos, micros, ms (milliseconds), s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours) and d (days). Also accepts "0" without a unit and "-1" to indicate an unspecified value.

    • indexing_pressure object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide indexing_pressure attribute Show indexing_pressure attribute object
      • memory object Required

        Additional properties are allowed.

        Hide memory attribute Show memory attribute object
        • limit number

          Number of outstanding bytes that may be consumed by indexing requests. When this limit is reached or exceeded, the node will reject new coordinating and primary operations. When replica operations consume 1.5x this limit, the node will reject new replica operations. Defaults to 10% of the heap.

    • store object

      Additional properties are allowed.

      Hide store attributes Show store attributes object

      • type string Required

        Any of:
        _types:StorageType string _types:StorageType string

        Values are fs, niofs, mmapfs, or hybridfs.

      • allow_mmap boolean

        You can restrict the use of the mmapfs and the related hybridfs store type via the setting node.store.allow_mmap. This is a boolean setting indicating whether or not memory-mapping is allowed. The default is to allow it. This setting is useful, for example, if you are in an environment where you can not control the ability to create a lot of memory maps so you need disable the ability to use memory-mapping.

  • version number

Responses

  • 200 application/json
    Hide response attribute Show response attribute object
    • acknowledged boolean Required

      For a successful response, this value is always true. On failure, an exception is returned instead.
POST /_template/{name} 
curl \
 -X POST http://api.example.com/_template/{name} \
 -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
 -d '{"mappings":{"_source":{"enabled":false}},"settings":{"number_of_shards":1},"properties":{"host_name":{"type":"keyword"},"created_at":{"type":"date","format":"EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss Z yyyy"}},"index_patterns":["te*","bar*"]}'
Request example 
{
  "mappings": {
    "_source": {
      "enabled": false
    }
  },
  "settings": {
    "number_of_shards": 1
  },
  "properties": {
    "host_name": {
      "type": "keyword"
    },
    "created_at": {
      "type": "date",
      "format": "EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss Z yyyy"
    }
  },
  "index_patterns": [
    "te*",
    "bar*"
  ]
}
Response examples (200) 
{
  "acknowledged": true
}