Open index API

Open index API

Opens a closed index. For data streams, the API opens any closed backing indices.

  1. POST /my-index-000001/_open

Request

POST /<target>/_open

Prerequisites

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

Description

You can use the open index API to re-open closed indices. If the request targets a data stream, the request re-opens any of the stream’s closed backing 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.

Wait for active shards

Because opening or closing an index allocates its shards, the wait_for_active_shards setting on index creation applies to the _open and _close index actions as well.

Path parameters

<target>

(Optional, string) Comma-separated list of data streams, indices, and aliases used to limit the request. Supports wildcards (*).

To disallow use of _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 closed.

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 or any positive integer up to the total number of shards in the index (number_of_replicas+1). Default: 1, the primary shard.

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 request re-opens a closed index named my-index-000001.

  1. POST /my-index-000001/_open

The API returns the following response:

  1. {
  2.   "acknowledged" : true,
  3.   "shards_acknowledged" : true
  4. }