Get started with the Elasticsearch Python client

This page guides you through the installation process of the Python client, shows you how to initialize the client, and how to perform basic Elasticsearch operations with it.

See the Python client documentation for more detailed usage instructions.

The same client is used for Elasticsearch Serverless, on-premise and managed Elasticsearch. Some API endpoints are however not available in Elasticsearch Serverless.

Requirements

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Python 3.9 or higher
pip

Documentation

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Find the full documentation for the Python client on readthedocs.

Installation

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Using the command line

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You can install the Python client with the following commands:

python -m pip install elasticsearch

Initialize the client

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Initialize the client using your API key and Elasticsearch endpoint:

from elasticsearch import Elasticsearch

client = Elasticsearch(
    "https://...",  # Your project's Elasticsearch endpoint
    api_key='api-key',  # API key for your project
)

To get API keys for the Elasticsearch endpoint for a project, see Get started.

Using the API

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After you’ve initialized the client, you can start ingesting documents. You can use the bulk API for this. This API enables you to index, update, and delete several documents in one request.

Creating an index and ingesting documents

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You can call the bulk API with a body parameter, an array of hashes that define the action, and a document.

The following is an example of indexing some classic books into the books index:

from datetime import datetime

client.bulk(
    body=[
        {"index": {"_index": "books", "_id": "1"}},
        {"title": "Infinite Jest", "author": "David Foster Wallace", "published_on": datetime(1996, 2, 1)},
        {"index": {"_index": "books", "_id": "2"}},
        {"title": "Ulysses", "author": "James Joyce", "published_on": datetime(1922, 2, 2)},
        {"index": {"_index": "books", "_id": "3"}},
        {"title": "Just Kids", "author": "Patti Smith", "published_on": datetime(2010, 1, 19)},
    ],
)

Getting documents

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You can get documents by using the following code:

response = client.get(index="books", id="1")
print(response.body)

Searching

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Now that some data is available, you can search your documents using the search API:

response = client.search(index="books", query={
    "match": {
        "title": "infinite"
    }
})

for hit in response["hits"]["hits"]:
    print(hit["_source"])

Updating a document

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You can call the update API to update a document:

client.update(index="books", id="2", doc={
    "author": "James Augustine Aloysius Joyce",
    "pages": 732,
})

Deleting a document

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You can call the delete API to delete a document:

client.delete(index="books", id="3")

Deleting an index

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client.indices.delete(index="books")

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