Index operations

The index panel shows one index: an overview with its operations, its mappings, its settings and its aliases. Open it from the index’s menu in the sidebar with Open index (mappings, settings…). It has four tabs: Overview, Mappings, Settings and Aliases.

Create an index

1. Open the menu on the Indices folder and choose Create index….
2. Enter a Name. It is checked against the server’s naming rules as you type.
3. Set Primary shards and Replicas, and optionally Aliases (comma-separated).
4. Enter the Mappings and any Other settings as JSON.
5. Check the PUT request shown below the form, then choose Create.

The new index opens in its panel.

Overview

The overview lists the index’s health, status, documents, deleted documents, size, primary size, shards, creation date and UUID, with the operations in its toolbar:

Button	What it does
Browse documents	Opens the document grid
Open / Close…	Opens a closed index, or closes an open one
Refresh index	Sends POST /<index>/_refresh
Flush	Sends POST /<index>/_flush
Force merge…	Sends POST /<index>/_forcemerge?max_num_segments=1
Clone…	Copies the index into a new one with the same shards, settings and documents
Shrink…	Copies the index into a new one with fewer primary shards
Reindex…	Copies the documents into a new index; see Mappings and reindex
Delete…	Deletes the index and all its documents

Closing, force merging and deleting are destructive: they always show the request and ask first. The other operations ask only on production and confirm-writes profiles, and a read-only profile disables them all.

Clone and shrink

Enter the New index name. For a shrink, pick the Primary shards: a factor of the current count. Writes to the source are blocked while it is copied; leave Allow writes to … again afterwards ticked to lift the block when the copy is done. A shrink also needs every primary on one node. Because the block stops writes, a clone or shrink asks for confirmation on every profile.

Clone… is disabled on clusters that cannot clone indices.

Settings

The Settings tab shows the current settings beside an editor for changes. Only dynamic settings can change on an existing index (replicas, refresh interval, blocks and so on). Enter the settings to change as JSON and choose Apply…. Settings that turn on an index block are treated as destructive and always ask.

Aliases of an index

The Aliases tab lists the aliases that point at the index, with whether each is its write index. Add one under Add an alias (tick Write index to make this index the alias’s write index), or remove one with Remove…. To move an alias here from other indices in one atomic step, use Swap in Aliases and templates.

Delete and close

Delete… removes the index and every document in it. Close… closes the index until you choose Open. Both show the request and ask first, on every profile.

Related

• Mappings and reindex
• Cluster