Elastic Search: how to see the indexed data

Question

I had a problem with ElasticSearch and Rails, where some data was not indexed properly because of attr_protected. Where does Elastic Search store the indexed data? It would be useful to check if the actual indexed data is wrong.

Checking the mapping with Tire.index('models').mapping does not help, the field is listed.

Answer 1

Probably the easiest way to explore your ElasticSearch cluster is to use elasticsearch-head.

You can install it by doing:

cd elasticsearch/
./bin/plugin install mobz/elasticsearch-head

Then (assuming ElasticSearch is already running on your local machine), open a browser window to:

http://localhost:9200/_plugin/head/

Alternatively, you can just use curl from the command line, eg:

Check the mapping for an index:

curl -XGET 'http://127.0.0.1:9200/my_index/_mapping?pretty=1' 

Get some sample docs:

curl -XGET 'http://127.0.0.1:9200/my_index/_search?pretty=1' 

See the actual terms stored in a particular field (ie how that field has been analyzed):

curl -XGET 'http://127.0.0.1:9200/my_index/_search?pretty=1'  -d '
 {
    "facets" : {
       "my_terms" : {
          "terms" : {
             "size" : 50,
             "field" : "foo"
          }
       }
    }
 }

More available here: http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide

UPDATE : Sense plugin in Marvel

By far the easiest way of writing curl-style commands for Elasticsearch is the Sense plugin in Marvel.

It comes with source highlighting, pretty indenting and autocomplete.

Note: Sense was originally a standalone chrome plugin but is now part of the Marvel project.