Step-by-step guide for creating index?

Question

I'm looking for a guide to create a index in elasticsearch, but it is not as simple as the guide given at:

https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/indices-create-index.html

It seems pretty simple what I want to do but I just can't seem to get it working. Now, I want my index to be daily indices (same as the default logstash index) but with some changes. These changes includes a name change and a specific mapping for fields which have specific types. Now I know that I have to specify in the output-elasticsearch section in the logstash configuration that:

index => "name-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}"

The only information I found was that an index can be created based on a template and I tried creating the template but still nothing happens.

Creating the template I used the following:

PUT _template/ids
{
"template": "ids-*", 
"order":    0, 
"settings": {
"index": {
  "number_of_shards": 5,
  "number_of_replicas": 1
},
"mappings": {
  "log": {
    "_all": {
      "enabled": true,
      "omit_norms": true
    },
    "properties": {
      "@timestamp": {
        "type": "date",
        "format": "strict_date_optional_time||epoch_millis"
      },
      "@version": {
        "type": "string",
        "index": "not_analyzed"
      },
      "field1": {
        "type": "string",
        "index": "not_analyzed"
      },
      "field2": {
        "type": "string",
        "index": "not_analyzed"
      },

Answer 1

For daily indices with "some changes" it is nice to use templates.

To check which templates are already set in the cluster use:

GET {es_url}/_template

To set new template to the cluster use:

PUT {es_url}/_template/ids
{
"template": "ids-*", 
"order":    0, 
"settings": {
"index": {
  "number_of_shards": 5,
  "number_of_replicas": 1
},
"mappings": {
  "log": {
    "_all": {
      "enabled": true,
      "omit_norms": true
    },
    "properties": {
      "@timestamp": {
        "type": "date",
        "format": "strict_date_optional_time||epoch_millis"
      },
      "@version": {
        "type": "string",
        "index": "not_analyzed"
      },
      "field1": {
        "type": "string",
        "index": "not_analyzed"
      },
      "field2": {
        "type": "string",
        "index": "not_analyzed"
      }
    }
  }
}}}

To delete an exsisting template use:

DELETE {es_url}/_template/{template_name}

If you set the "ids" template to the cluster- any document that will be inserted to the cluster, to index with name that matches "ids-*" (aka "ids-123", "ids-sheker", "ids-2016.05.02") will get the mapping of the inserted ids template.