The Sense UI

The Sense editor allows writing multiple requests below each other. As shown in the Introduction section, you can submit a request to Elasticsearch by positioning the cursor and using the Action Menu. Similarly you can select multiple requests in one go:

Figure 6. Selecting Multiple Requests

Sense will send the request one by one to Elasticsearch and show the output on the right pane as Elasticsearch responds. This is very handy when debugging an issue or trying query combinations in multiple scenarios.

Selecting multiple requests also allows you to auto format and copy them as cURL in one go.

Sense allows you to auto format messy requests. To do so, position the cursor on the request you would like to format and select Auto Indent from the action menu:

Figure 7. Auto Indent a request

Sense will adjust the JSON body of the request and it will now look like this:

Figure 8. A formatted request

If you select Auto Indent on a request that is already perfectly formatted, Sense will collapse the request body to a single line per document. This is very handy when working with Elasticsearch’s bulk APIs:

Figure 9. One doc per line

Sense comes with a set of nifty keyboard shortcuts making working with it even more efficient. Here is an overview:

Sense maintains a list of the last 500 requests that were successfully executed by Elasticsearch. The history is available by clicking the clock icon on the top right side of the window. The icons opens the history panel where you can see the old requests. You can also select a request here and it will be added to the editor at the current cursor position.

Figure 10. History Panel

Sense has multiple settings you can set. All of them are available in the Settings panel. To open the panel click on the cog icon on the top right.

Figure 11. Settings Panel