Create index

Introduced 1.0

While you can create an index by using a document as a base, you can also create an empty index for later use.

When creating an index, you can specify its mappings, settings, and aliases.

Path and HTTP methods

PUT <index-name>

Index naming restrictions

OpenSearch indexes have the following naming restrictions:

All letters must be lowercase.
Index names can’t begin with underscores (_) or hyphens (-).
Index names can’t contain spaces, commas, or the following characters:

:, ", *, +, /, \, |, ?, #, >, or <

Path parameters

Parameter	Description
index	String	The index name. Must conform to the index naming restrictions. Required.

Query parameters

You can include the following query parameters in your request. All parameters are optional.

Parameter	Type	Description
wait_for_active_shards	String	Specifies the number of active shards that must be available before OpenSearch processes the request. Default is 1 (only the primary shard). Set to `all` or a positive integer. Values greater than 1 require replicas. For example, if you specify a value of 3, the index must have two replicas distributed across two additional nodes for the request to succeed.
cluster_manager_timeout	Time	How long to wait for a connection to the cluster manager node. Default is `30s`.
timeout	Time	How long to wait for the request to return. Default is `30s`.

Request body

As part of your request, you can optionally specify index settings, mappings, and aliases for your newly created index.

Example request

PUT /sample-index1
{
  "settings": {
    "index": {
      "number_of_shards": 2,
      "number_of_replicas": 1
    }
  },
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "age": {
        "type": "integer"
      }
    }
  },
  "aliases": {
    "sample-alias1": {}
  }
}