Mapping
editMapping
editMapping is the process of defining how a document, and the fields it contains, are stored and indexed. For instance, use mappings to define:
- which string fields should be treated as full text fields.
- which fields contain numbers, dates, or geolocations.
- the format of date values.
- custom rules to control the mapping for dynamically added fields.
A mapping definition has:
- Meta-fields
-
Meta-fields are used to customize how a document’s metadata associated is
treated. Examples of meta-fields include the document’s
_index
,_id
, and_source
fields. - Fields or properties
-
A mapping contains a list of fields or
properties
pertinent to the document.
Before 7.0.0, the mappings definition used to include a type name. For more details, please see Removal of mapping types.
Field datatypes
editEach field has a data type
which can be:
It is often useful to index the same field in different ways for different
purposes. For instance, a string
field could be indexed as
a text
field for full-text search, and as a keyword
field for
sorting or aggregations. Alternatively, you could index a string field with
the standard
analyzer, the
english
analyzer, and the
french
analyzer.
This is the purpose of multi-fields. Most datatypes support multi-fields
via the fields
parameter.
Settings to prevent mappings explosion
editDefining too many fields in an index is a condition that can lead to a mapping explosion, which can cause out of memory errors and difficult situations to recover from. This problem may be more common than expected. As an example, consider a situation in which every new document inserted introduces new fields. This is quite common with dynamic mappings. Every time a document contains new fields, those will end up in the index’s mappings. This isn’t worrying for a small amount of data, but it can become a problem as the mapping grows. The following settings allow you to limit the number of field mappings that can be created manually or dynamically, in order to prevent bad documents from causing a mapping explosion:
-
index.mapping.total_fields.limit
-
The maximum number of fields in an index. Field and object mappings, as well as field aliases count towards this limit. The default value is
1000
.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.
If you increase this setting, we recommend you also increase the
indices.query.bool.max_clause_count
setting, which limits the maximum number of boolean clauses in a query. -
index.mapping.depth.limit
-
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 is2
, etc. The default is20
. -
index.mapping.nested_fields.limit
-
The maximum number of distinct
nested
mappings in an index, defaults to50
. -
index.mapping.nested_objects.limit
-
The maximum number of
nested
JSON objects within a single document across all nested types, defaults to 10000. -
index.mapping.field_name_length.limit
- Setting for the maximum length of a field name. The default value is Long.MAX_VALUE (no limit). 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.
Dynamic mapping
editFields and mapping types do not need to be defined before being used. Thanks
to dynamic mapping, new field names will be added automatically, just by
indexing a document. New fields can be added both to the top-level mapping
type, and to inner object
and nested
fields.
The dynamic mapping rules can be configured to customise the mapping that is used for new fields.
Explicit mappings
editYou know more about your data than Elasticsearch can guess, so while dynamic mapping can be useful to get started, at some point you will want to specify your own explicit mappings.
You can create field mappings when you create an index and add fields to an existing index.
Create an index with an explicit mapping
editYou can use the create index API to create a new index with an explicit mapping.
PUT /my-index { "mappings": { "properties": { "age": { "type": "integer" }, "email": { "type": "keyword" }, "name": { "type": "text" } } } }
Add a field to an existing mapping
editYou can use the put mapping API to add one or more new fields to an existing index.
The following example adds employee-id
, a keyword
field with an
index
mapping parameter value of false
. This means values
for the employee-id
field are stored but not indexed or available for search.
PUT /my-index/_mapping { "properties": { "employee-id": { "type": "keyword", "index": false } } }
Update the mapping of a field
editExcept for supported mapping parameters, you can’t change the mapping or field type of an existing field. Changing an existing field could invalidate data that’s already indexed.
If you need to change the mapping of a field, create a new index with the correct mapping and reindex your data into that index.
Renaming a field would invalidate data already indexed under the old field name.
Instead, add an alias
field to create an alternate field name.
View the mapping of an index
editYou can use the get mapping API to view the mapping of an existing index.
GET /my-index/_mapping
The API returns the following response:
{ "my-index" : { "mappings" : { "properties" : { "age" : { "type" : "integer" }, "email" : { "type" : "keyword" }, "employee-id" : { "type" : "keyword", "index" : false }, "name" : { "type" : "text" } } } } }
View the mapping of specific fields
editIf you only want to view the mapping of one or more specific fields, you can use the get field mapping API.
This is useful if you don’t need the complete mapping of an index or your index contains a large number of fields.
The following request retrieves the mapping for the employee-id
field.
GET /my-index/_mapping/field/employee-id
The API returns the following response:
{ "my-index" : { "mappings" : { "employee-id" : { "full_name" : "employee-id", "mapping" : { "employee-id" : { "type" : "keyword", "index" : false } } } } } }