Create index

Introduced 1.0

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

Example

The following example demonstrates how to create an index with a non-default number of primary and replica shards, specifies that age is of type integer, and assigns a sample-alias1 alias to the index.

  1. PUT /sample-index1
  2. {
  3. "settings": {
  4. "index": {
  5. "number_of_shards": 2,
  6. "number_of_replicas": 1
  7. }
  8. },
  9. "mappings": {
  10. "properties": {
  11. "age": {
  12. "type": "integer"
  13. }
  14. }
  15. },
  16. "aliases": {
  17. "sample-alias1": {}
  18. }
  19. }

Path and HTTP methods

  1. 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 <

URL parameters

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

ParameterTypeDescription
wait_for_active_shardsStringSpecifies 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.
master_timeoutTimeHow long to wait for a connection to the master node. Default is 30s.
timeoutTimeHow long to wait for the request to return. Default is 30s.

Request body

As part of your request, you can supply parameters in your request’s body that specify index settings, mappings, and aliases for your newly created index. The following sections provide more information about index settings and mappings.

Index settings

Index settings are separated into two varieties: static index settings and dynamic index settings. Static index settings are settings that you specify at index creation and can’t change later. You can change dynamic settings at any time, including at index creation.

Static index settings

SettingDescription
index.number_of_shardsThe number of primary shards in the index. Default is 1.
index.number_of_routing_shardsThe number of routing shards used to split an index.
index.shard.check_on_startupWhether the index’s shards should be checked for corruption. Available options are false (do not check for corruption), checksum (check for physical corruption), and true (check for both physical and logical corruption). Default is false.
index.codecThe compression type to use to compress stored data. Available values are best_compression and default.
index.routing_partition_sizeThe number of shards a custom routing value can go to. Routing helps an imbalanced cluster by relocating values to a subset of shards rather than just a single shard. To enable, set this value to greater than 1 but less than index.number_of_shards. Default is 1.
index.soft_deletes.retention_lease.periodThe maximum amount of time to retain a shard’s history of operations. Default is 12h.
index.load_fixed_bitset_filters_eagerlyWhether OpenSearch should pre-load cached filters. Available options are true and false. Default is true.
index.hiddenWhether the index should be hidden. Hidden indices are not returned as part of queries that have wildcards. Available options are true and false. Default is false.

Dynamic index Settings

SettingDescription
index.number_of_replicasThe number of replica shards each primary shard should have. For example, if you have 4 primary shards and set index.number_of_replicas to 3, the index has 12 replica shards. Default is 1.
index.auto_expand_replicasWhether the cluster should automatically add replica shards based on the number of data nodes. Specify a lower bound and upper limit (for example, 0-9), or all for the upper limit. For example, if you have 5 data nodes and set index.auto_expand_replicas to 0-3, then the cluster does not autoamtically add another replica shard. However, if you set this value to 0-all and add 2 more nodes for a total of 7, the cluster will expand to now have 6 replica shards. Default is disabled.
index.search.idle.afterAmount of time a shard should wait for a search or get request until it goes idle. Default is 30s.
index.refresh_intervalHow often the index should refresh, which publishes its most recent changes and makes them available for searching. Can be set to -1 to disable refreshing. Default is 1s.
index.max_result_windowThe maximum value of from + size for searches to the index. from is the starting index to search from, and size is the amount of results to return. Default: 10000.
index.max_inner_result_windowMaximum value of from + size to return nested search hits and most relevant document aggregated during the query. from is the starting index to search from, and size is the amount of top hits to return. Default is 100.
index.max_rescore_windowThe maximum value of window_size for rescore requests to the index. Rescore requests reorder the index’s documents and return a new score, which can be more precise. Default is the same as index.max_inner_result_window or 10000 by default.
index.max_docvalue_fields_searchMaximum amount of docvalue_fields allowed in a query. Default is 100.
index.max_script_fieldsMaximum amount of script_fields allowed in a query. Default is 32.
index.max_ngram_diffMaximum difference between min_gram and max_gram values for NGramTokenizer and NGramTokenFilter fields. Default is 1.
index.max_shingle_diffMaximum difference between max_shingle_size and min_shingle_size to feed into the shingle token filter. Default is 3.
index.max_refresh_listenersMaximum amount of refresh listeners each shard is allowed to have.
index.analyze.max_token_countMaximum amount of tokens that can return from the _analyze API operation. Default is 10000.
index.highlight.max_analyzed_offsetThe amount of characters a highlight request can analyze. Default is 1000000.
index.max_terms_countThe maximum amount of terms a terms query can accept. Default is 65536.
index.max_regex_lengthThe maximum character length of regex that can be in a regexp query. Default is 1000.
index.query.default_fieldA field or list of fields that OpenSearch uses in queries in case a field isn’t specified in the parameters.
index.routing.allocation.enableSpecifies options for the index’s shard allocation. Available options are all (allow allocation for all shards), primaries (allow allocation only for primary shards), new_primaries (allow allocation only for new primary shards), and none (do not allow allocation). Default is all.
index.routing.rebalance.enableEnables shard rebalancing for the index. Available options are all (allow rebalancing for all shards), primaries (allow rebalancing only for primary shards), replicas (allow rebalancing only for replicas), and none (do not allow rebalancing). Default is all.
index.gc_deletesAmount of time to retain a deleted document’s version number. Default is 60s.
index.default_pipelineThe default ingest node pipeline for the index. If the default pipeline is set and the pipeline does not exist, then index requests fail. The pipeline name _none specifies that the index does not have an ingest pipeline.
index.final_pipelineThe final ingest node pipeline for the index. If the final pipeline is set and the pipeline does not exist, then index requests fail. The pipeline name _none specifies that the index does not have an ingest pipeline.