NOTE: You are looking at documentation for an older release. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
Arrays
editArrays
editIn Elasticsearch, there is no dedicated array
datatype. Any field can contain
zero or more values by default, however, all values in the array must be of the
same datatype. For instance:
-
an array of strings: [
"one"
,"two"
] -
an array of integers: [
1
,2
] -
an array of arrays: [
1
, [2
,3
]] which is the equivalent of [1
,2
,3
] -
an array of objects: [
{ "name": "Mary", "age": 12 }
,{ "name": "John", "age": 10 }
]
Arrays of objects
Arrays of objects do not work as you would expect: you cannot query each
object independently of the other objects in the array. If you need to be
able to do this then you should use the nested
datatype instead
of the object
datatype.
This is explained in more detail in Nested datatype.
When adding a field dynamically, the first value in the array determines the
field type
. All subsequent values must be of the same datatype or it must
at least be possible to coerce subsequent values to the same
datatype.
Arrays with a mixture of datatypes are not supported: [ 10
, "some string"
]
An array may contain null
values, which are either replaced by the
configured null_value
or skipped entirely. An empty array
[]
is treated as a missing field — a field with no values.
Nothing needs to be pre-configured in order to use arrays in documents, they are supported out of the box:
PUT my_index/_doc/1 { "message": "some arrays in this document...", "tags": [ "elasticsearch", "wow" ], "lists": [ { "name": "prog_list", "description": "programming list" }, { "name": "cool_list", "description": "cool stuff list" } ] } PUT my_index/_doc/2 { "message": "no arrays in this document...", "tags": "elasticsearch", "lists": { "name": "prog_list", "description": "programming list" } } GET my_index/_search { "query": { "match": { "tags": "elasticsearch" } } }