Search code examples
elasticsearchelasticsearch-mapping

Changing type of property in index type's mapping

I have index mapping for type 'T1' as below:

"T1" : {
    "properties" : {
        "prop1" : {
            "type" : "text"
        }
    }
}

And now I want to change the type of prop1 from text to keyword. I don't want to delete index. I have also read people suggesting to create another property with new type and replace it. But then I have to update old documents which I am not interested into. I tried to use PUT api as below but I never works.

PUT /indexName/T1/_mapping -d
{
    "T1" : {
        "properties" : {
            "prop1" : {
                "type" : "keyword"
            }
        }
    }
}

Is there any way to achieve this?

Solution

  • Mapping cannot be modified, hence the PUT api you have used will not work. The new index will have to be created with the updated mapping to be used and reindexing all the data to new index. To prevent downtime you can always use alias: https://www.elastic.co/blog/changing-mapping-with-zero-downtime