Update document

Update document

Introduced 1.0

If you need to update a document’s fields in your index, you can use the update document API operation. You can do so by specifying the new data you want in your index or by including a script in your request body, which OpenSearch runs to update the document.

Example

POST /sample-index1/_update/1
{
  "doc": {
    "first_name" : "Bruce",
    "last_name" : "Wayne"
  }
}

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Script example

POST /test-index1/_update/1
{
  "script" : {
    "source": "ctx._source.secret_identity = \"Batman\""
  }
}

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Path and HTTP methods

POST /<index>/_update/<_id>

URL parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Required
<index>	String	Name of the index.	Yes
<_id>	String	The ID of the document to update.	Yes
if_seq_no	Integer	Only perform the update operation if the document has the specified sequence number.	No
if_primary_term	Integer	Perform the update operation if the document has the specified primary term.	No
lang	String	Language of the script. Default is `painless`.	No
require_alias	Boolean	Specifies whether the destination must be an index alias. Default is false.	No
refresh	Enum	If true, OpenSearch refreshes shards to make the operation visible to searching. Valid options are `true`, `false`, and `wait_for`, which tells OpenSearch to wait for a refresh before executing the operation. Default is `false`.	No
retry_on_conflict	Integer	The amount of times OpenSearch should retry the operation if there’s a document conflict. Default is 0.	No
routing	String	Value to route the update operation to a specific shard.	No
_source	Boolean or List	Whether or not to include the `_source` field in the response body. Default is `false`. This parameter also supports a comma-separated list of source fields for including multiple source fields in the query response.	No
_source_excludes	List	A comma-separated list of source fields to exclude in the query response.	No
_source_includes	List	A comma-separated list of source fields to include in the query response.	No
timeout	Time	How long to wait for a response from the cluster.	No
wait_for_active_shards	String	The number of active shards that must be available before OpenSearch processes the update 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 operation to succeed.	No

Request body

Your request body must contain the information you want to update your document with. If you just want to replace certain fields in your document, your request body must include a doc object, which has the fields you want to update.

{
  "doc": {
    "first_name": "Thomas",
    "last_name": "Wayne"
    }
}

You can also use a script to tell OpenSearch how to update your document.

{
  "script" : {
    "source": "ctx._source.oldValue += params.newValue",
    "lang": "painless",
    "params" : {
      "newValue" : 10
    }
  }
}

Upsert

Upsert is an operation that conditionally either updates an existing document or inserts a new one based on information in the object. In the sample below, the upsert object updates the last name and adds the age field if a document already exists. If a document does not exist, a new one is indexed using content in the upsert object.

{
  "doc": {
    "first_name": "Martha",
    "last_name": "Rivera"
  },
  "upsert": {
    "last_name": "Oliveira",
    "age": "31"
  }
}

You can also add doc_as_upsert to the request and set it to true to use the information in doc for performing the upsert operation.

{
  "doc": {
    "first_name": "Martha",
    "last_name": "Oliveira",
    "age": "31"
  },
  "doc_as_upsert": true
}

Response

{
  "_index": "sample-index1",
  "_id": "1",
  "_version": 3,
  "result": "updated",
  "_shards": {
    "total": 2,
    "successful": 2,
    "failed": 0
  },
  "_seq_no": 4,
  "_primary_term": 17
}

Response body fields

Field	Description
_index	The name of the index.
_id	The document’s ID.
_version	The document’s version.
result	The result of the update operation.
_shards	Detailed information about the cluster’s shards.
total	The total number of shards.
successful	The number of shards OpenSearch successfully updated the document in.
failed	The number of shards OpenSearch failed to update the document in.
_seq_no	The sequence number assigned when the document was indexed.
_primary_term	The primary term assigned when the document was indexed.