Run API requests with Console

Console lets you interact with Elasticsearch APIs and Kibana APIs from within Kibana.

To go to Console, find Dev Tools in the navigation menu or use the global search bar.

You can also find Console directly on certain Search solution and Elasticsearch serverless project pages, where you can expand it from the footer. This Console, called Persistent Console, has the same capabilities and shares the same history as the Console in Dev Tools.

Console understands commands in a cURL-like syntax. For example, the following is a GET request to the Elasticsearch _search API.

GET /_search
{
  "query": {
    "match_all": {}
  }
}

Here is the equivalent command in cURL:

curl -XGET "http://localhost:9200/_search" -d'
{
  "query": {
    "match_all": {}
  }
}'

Prepend requests to a Kibana API endpoint with kbn:

GET kbn:/api/index_management/indices

When you’re typing a command, Console makes context-sensitive suggestions. These suggestions show you the parameters for each API and speed up your typing.

You can configure your preferences for autocomplete in the Console settings.

You can write comments or temporarily disable parts of a request by using double forward slashes or pound signs to create single-line comments.

# This request searches all of your indices.
GET /_search
{
  // The query parameter indicates query context.
  "query": {
    "match_all": {} // Matches all documents.
  }
}

You can also use a forward slash followed by an asterisk to mark the beginning of multi-line comments. An asterisk followed by a forward slash marks the end.

GET /_search
{
  "query": {
    /*"match_all": {
      "boost": 1.2
    }*/
    "match_none": {}
  }
}

Click Variables to create, edit, and delete variables.

You can refer to these variables in the paths and bodies of your requests. Each variable can be referenced multiple times.

GET ${pathVariable}
{
  "query": {
    "match": {
      "${bodyNameVariable}": "${bodyValueVariable}"
    }
  }
}

By default, variables in the body may be substituted as a boolean, number, array, or object by removing nearby quotes instead of a string with surrounding quotes. Triple quotes overwrite this default behavior and enforce simple replacement as a string.

GET /locations/_search
{
  "query": {
    "bool": {
      "must": {
        "match": {
          // ${shopName} shall be replaced as a string if the variable exists.
          "shop.name": """${shopName}"""
        }
      },
      "filter": {
        "geo_distance": {
          "distance": "12km",
          // "${pinLocation}" may be substituted with an array such as [-70, 40].
          "pin.location": "${pinLocation}"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

The auto-formatting capability can help you format requests to be more readable. Select one or more requests that you want to format, open the contextual menu, and then select Auto indent.

To view the documentation for an API endpoint, select the request, then open the contextual menu and select Open API reference.

When you’re ready to run a request, select the request, and click the play button.

The result of the request execution is displayed in the response panel, where you can see:

You can export requests:

Console maintains a list of the last 500 requests that you tried to execute. To view them, open the History tab.

You can run a request from your history again by selecting the request and clicking Add and run. If you want to add it back to the Console input panel without running it yet, click Add instead. It is added to the editor at the current cursor position.

Go to the Config tab of Console to customize its display, autocomplete, and accessibility settings.

If you don’t want to use Console, you can disable it by setting console.ui.enabled to false in your kibana.yml configuration file. Changing this setting causes the server to regenerate assets on the next startup, which might cause a delay before pages start being served.

You can also choose to only disable the persistent console that shows in the footer of several Kibana pages. To do that, go to Stack Management > Advanced Settings, and turn off the devTools:enablePersistentConsole setting.