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Elastic Docs ›Elasticsearch Reference [5.5] ›Modules ›Scripting

How to use scripts

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How to use scripts

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Wherever scripting is supported in the Elasticsearch API, the syntax follows the same pattern:

  "script": {
    "lang":   "...",  
    "inline" | "stored" | "file": "...", 
    "params": { ... } 
  }

The language the script is written in, which defaults to painless.

The script itself which may be specified as inline, stored, or file.

Any named parameters that should be passed into the script.

For example, the following script is used in a search request to return a scripted field:

PUT my_index/my_type/1
{
  "my_field": 5
}

GET my_index/_search
{
  "script_fields": {
    "my_doubled_field": {
      "script": {
        "lang":   "expression",
        "inline": "doc['my_field'] * multiplier",
        "params": {
          "multiplier": 2
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Script Parameters

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lang
Specifies the language the script is written in. Defaults to painless but may be set to any of languages listed in Scripting. The default language may be changed in the elasticsearch.yml config file by setting script.default_lang to the appropriate language.
inline, stored, file

Specifies the source of the script. An inline script is specified inline as in the example above, a stored script is specified stored and is retrieved from the cluster state (see Stored Scripts), and a file script is retrieved from a file in the config/scripts directory (see File Scripts).

While languages like expression and painless can be used out of the box as inline or stored scripts, other languages like groovy can only be specified as file unless you first adjust the default scripting security settings.

params
Specifies any named parameters that are passed into the script as variables.

Prefer parameters

The first time Elasticsearch sees a new script, it compiles it and stores the compiled version in a cache. Compilation can be a heavy process.

If you need to pass variables into the script, you should pass them in as named params instead of hard-coding values into the script itself. For example, if you want to be able to multiply a field value by different multipliers, don’t hard-code the multiplier into the script:

  "inline": "doc['my_field'] * 2"

Instead, pass it in as a named parameter:

  "inline": "doc['my_field'] * multiplier",
  "params": {
    "multiplier": 2
  }

The first version has to be recompiled every time the multiplier changes. The second version is only compiled once.

If you compile too many unique scripts within a small amount of time, Elasticsearch will reject the new dynamic scripts with a circuit_breaking_exception error. By default, up to 15 inline scripts per minute will be compiled. You can change this setting dynamically by setting script.max_compilations_per_minute.

File-based Scripts

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To increase security, non-sandboxed languages can only be specified in script files stored on every node in the cluster. File scripts must be saved in the scripts directory whose default location depends on whether you use the zip/tar.gz ($ES_HOME/config/scripts/), RPM, or Debian package. The default may be changed with the path.scripts setting.

The languages which are assumed to be safe by default are: painless, expression, and mustache (used for search and query templates).

Any files placed in the scripts directory will be compiled automatically when the node starts up and then every 60 seconds thereafter.

The file should be named as follows: {script-name}.{lang}. For instance, the following example creates a Groovy script called calculate-score:

cat "Math.log(_score * 2) + params.my_modifier" > config/scripts/calculate_score.painless

This script can be used as follows:

GET my_index/_search
{
  "query": {
    "script": {
      "script": {
        "lang":   "painless", 
        "file":   "calculate_score", 
        "params": {
          "my_modifier": 2
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

The language of the script, which should correspond with the script file suffix.

The name of the script, which should be the name of the file.

The script directory may contain sub-directories, in which case the hierarchy of directories is flattened and concatenated with underscores. A script in group1/group2/my_script.groovy should use group1_group2_myscript as the file name.

Automatic script reloading

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The scripts directory will be rescanned every 60s (configurable with the resource.reload.interval setting) and new, changed, or removed scripts will be compiled, updated, or deleted from the script cache.

Script reloading can be completely disabled by setting script.auto_reload_enabled to false.

Stored Scripts

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Scripts may be stored in and retrieved from the cluster state using the _scripts end-point.

Deprecated Namespace

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The namespace for stored scripts using both lang and id as a unique identifier has been deprecated. The new namespace for stored scripts will only use id. Stored scripts with the same id, but different lang's will no longer be allowed in 6.0. To comply with the new namespace for stored scripts, existing stored scripts should be deleted and put again. Any scripts that share an id but have different `lang`s will need to be re-named. For example, take the following:

"id": "example", "lang": "painless" "id": "example", "lang": "expressions"

The above scripts will conflict under the new namespace since the id’s are the same. At least one will have to be re-named to comply with the new namespace of only id.

As a final caveat, stored search templates and stored scripts share the same namespace, so if a search template has the same id as a stored script, one of the two will have to be re-named as well using delete and put requests.

Request Examples

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The following are examples of using a stored script that lives at /_scripts/{id}.

First, create the script called calculate-score in the cluster state:

POST _scripts/calculate-score
{
  "script": {
    "lang": "painless",
    "code": "Math.log(_score * 2) + params.my_modifier"
  }
}

This same script can be retrieved with:

GET _scripts/calculate-score

Stored scripts can be used by specifying the stored parameters as follows:

GET _search
{
  "query": {
    "script": {
      "script": {
        "stored": "calculate-score",
        "params": {
          "my_modifier": 2
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

And deleted with:

DELETE _scripts/calculate-score

Script Caching

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All scripts are cached by default so that they only need to be recompiled when updates occur. File scripts keep a static cache and will always reside in memory. Both inline and stored scripts are stored in a cache that can evict residing scripts. By default, scripts do not have a time-based expiration, but you can change this behavior by using the script.cache.expire setting. You can configure the size of this cache by using the script.cache.max_size setting. By default, the cache size is 100.

The size of stored scripts is limited to 65,535 bytes. This can be changed by setting script.max_size_in_bytes setting to increase that soft limit, but if scripts are really large then alternatives like native scripts should be considered instead.

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