Connecting

This page contains the information you need to connect and use the Client with Elastic Enterprise Search.

On this page

This section contains code snippets to show you how to connect to Enterprise Search, App Search, and Workplace Search.

Each service has its own authentication schemes. Using the http_auth property with either a string for a key / token or a tuple of (username, password) for basic authentication will set the proper Authorization HTTP header on the client instance.

Enterprise Search supports HTTP basic authentication with a username and password.

HTTP basic authentication uses the http_auth parameter by passing in a username and password as a tuple:

http_auth = {user: 'elastic', password: 'password'}
host = 'https://id.ent-search.europe-west2.gcp.elastic-cloud.com'

ent_client = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::Client.new(host: host, http_auth: http_auth)

In your Elastic App Search dashboard, navigate to Credentials and Create a Key for the client to use. Make sure to read the documentation on Authentication to understand which key you want to use. Once you’ve created your key, you need to copy the key value to use on your client.

The App Search client can be accessed from an existing Enterprise Search Client, or you can initialize a new one. If you instantiate the App Search client from an existing Enterprise Search Client, it’s going to share the HTTP transport instance, so it’s going to connect to the same host which is a common scenario. However, if you want to connect to a different host, you should instantiate a new App Search Client on its own.

host = 'https://id.ent-search.europe-west2.gcp.elastic-cloud.com'
api_key = 'private-api-key'

# From the Enterprise Search client:
ent_client = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::Client.new(host: host)
ent_client.app_search.http_auth = api_key

# On its own
client = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::AppSearch::Client.new(host: host, http_auth: api_key)

App Search also supports authenticating with signed search keys. Here’s an example on how to use it:

public_search_key = 'search-key-value'
# This name must match the name of the key above from your App Search dashboard
public_search_key_name = 'search-key'

# Say we have documents with a title and an author. We want this key to be able
#  to search by title, but only return the author:
options = {
  search_fields: { title: {} },
  result_fields: { author: { raw: {} } }
}

signed_search_key = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::AppSearch::Client.create_signed_search_key(public_search_key, public_search_key_name, options)

client = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::AppSearch::Client.new(http_auth: signed_search_key)

client.search(engine_name, query: 'jungle')

Workplace Search supports multiple authentication methods:

In your Elastic Workplace Search dashboard navigate to Sources/Add a Shared Content Source and select Custom API Source to create a new source. Name your source (e.g. Enterprise Search Ruby Client) and once it’s created you’ll get an access token and an ID.

The Workplace Search client can be accessed from an existing Enterprise Search Client, or you can initialize a new one. If you instantiate the Workplace Search client from an existing Enterprise Search Client, it’s going to share the HTTP transport instance, so it’s going to connect to the same host, which is a common scenario. However, if you want to connect to a different host, you should instantiate a new Workplace Client on its own:

host = 'https://id.ent-search.europe-west2.gcp.elastic-cloud.com'
access_token = '<access token>'
content_source_id = '<content source id>'

# From the Enterprise Search client:
ent_client = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::Client.new(host: host)
ent_client.workplace_search.http_auth = access_token
ent_client.workplace_search.index_documents(content_source_id, body: documents)

# On its own
workplace_search_client = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::WorkplaceSearch::Client.new(
  host: host,
  http_auth: access_token
)

Workplace Search APIs support basic authentication headers to authenticate users. All Workplace Search APIs support basic authentication:

host = 'https://id.ent-search.europe-west2.gcp.elastic-cloud.com'
basic_auth = { user: 'enterprise_search', password: 'changeme' }

workplace_search_client = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::WorkplaceSearch::Client.new(
  host: host,
  http_auth: basic_auth
)

Workplace Search APIs support Elasticsearch tokens generated by the Elasticsearch Token Service. All Workplace Search APIs support Elasticsearch tokens as an authentication method.

host = 'https://id.ent-search.europe-west2.gcp.elastic-cloud.com'
access_token = '<access token>'

workplace_search_client = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::WorkplaceSearch::Client.new(
  host: host,
  http_auth: access_token
)

The Search API and the Analytics Events API support user access tokens generated by the Workplace Search OAuth Service. The token is acquired via an OAuth authorization flow. User access tokens are meant to be used for Custom Search Experiences. Check OAuth Authentication.

You can pass in headers as a parameter to any of the API Endpoints to set custom headers for the request:

headers = { 'x-custom-header' => 'Header value' }
workplace_search_client.index_documents(
  content_source_id,
  { body: documents, headers: headers }
)

The Enterprise Search Ruby client is powered by the elastic-transport gem. You can read more about it here. The client accepts a transport object as an initializer:

transport = Elastic::Transport::Transport::HTTP::Curb.new
ent_client = Elastic::EnterpriseSearch::Client.new(transport: transport)