Close index API
- Close index API

Close index API

Closes an index.

POST /my-index-000001/_close

Request

POST /<index>/_close

Prerequisites

If the Elasticsearch security features are enabled, you must have the manage index privilege for the target index or index alias.

Description

You use the close index API to close open indices.

A closed index is blocked for read/write operations and does not allow all operations that opened indices allow. It is not possible to index documents or to search for documents in a closed index. This allows closed indices to not have to maintain internal data structures for indexing or searching documents, resulting in a smaller overhead on the cluster.

When opening or closing an index, the master is responsible for restarting the index shards to reflect the new state of the index. The shards will then go through the normal recovery process. The data of opened/closed indices is automatically replicated by the cluster to ensure that enough shard copies are safely kept around at all times.

You can open and close multiple indices. An error is thrown if the request explicitly refers to a missing index. This behaviour can be disabled using the ignore_unavailable=true parameter.

All indices can be opened or closed at once using _all as the index name or specifying patterns that identify them all (e.g. *).

Identifying indices via wildcards or _all can be disabled by setting the action.destructive_requires_name flag in the config file to true. This setting can also be changed via the cluster update settings api.

Closed indices consume a significant amount of disk-space which can cause problems in managed environments. Closing indices can be disabled via the cluster settings API by setting cluster.indices.close.enable to false. The default is true.

Path parameters

<index>

(Optional, string) Comma-separated list or wildcard expression of index names used to limit the request.

To close all indices, use _all or *. To disallow the closing of indices with _all or wildcard expressions, change the action.destructive_requires_name cluster setting to true. You can update this setting in the elasticsearch.yml file or using the cluster update settings API.

Query parameters

allow_no_indices

(Optional, Boolean) If false, the request returns an error if any wildcard expression, index alias, or _all value targets only missing or closed indices. This behavior applies even if the request targets other open indices. For example, a request targeting foo*,bar* returns an error if an index starts with foo but no index starts with bar.

Defaults to true.

expand_wildcards

(Optional, string) Type of index that wildcard patterns can match. If the request can target data streams, this argument determines whether wildcard expressions match hidden data streams. Supports comma-separated values, such as open,hidden. Valid values are:

all

Match any data stream or index, including hidden ones.

open

Match open, non-hidden indices. Also matches any non-hidden data stream.

closed

Match closed, non-hidden indices. Also matches any non-hidden data stream. Data streams cannot be closed.

hidden

Match hidden data streams and hidden indices. Must be combined with open, closed, or both.

none

Wildcard patterns are not accepted.

Defaults to open.

ignore_unavailable

(Optional, Boolean) If false, the request returns an error if it targets a missing or closed index. Defaults to false.

wait_for_active_shards

(Optional, string) The number of shard copies that must be active before proceeding with the operation. Set to all, index-setting, or any positive integer up to the total number of shards in the index (number_of_replicas+1). The value index-setting means to wait according to the index setting index.write.wait_for_active_shards. Default: 0, meaning do not wait for any shards to be ready.

See Active shards.

master_timeout

(Optional, time units) Period to wait for a connection to the master node. If no response is received before the timeout expires, the request fails and returns an error. Defaults to 30s.

timeout

(Optional, time units) Period to wait for a response. If no response is received before the timeout expires, the request fails and returns an error. Defaults to 30s.

Examples

The following example shows how to close an index:

POST /my-index-000001/_close

The API returns following response:

{
  "acknowledged": true,
  "shards_acknowledged": true,
  "indices": {
    "my-index-000001": {
      "closed": true
    }
  }
}