elasticsearch/docs/python/index.asciidoc

= elasticsearch-py

== Overview

Official low-level client for Elasticsearch. Its goal is to provide common
ground for all Elasticsearch-related code in Python; because of this it tries
to be opinion-free and very extendable. The full documentation is available at
http://elasticsearch-py.rtfd.org/

.Elasticsearch DSL
************************************************************************************
For a more high level client library with more limited scope, have a look at
http://elasticsearch-dsl.rtfd.org/[elasticsearch-dsl] - a more pythonic library
sitting on top of `elasticsearch-py`.

It provides a more convenient and idiomatic way to write and manipulate
http://elasticsearch-dsl.readthedocs.org/en/latest/search_dsl.html[queries]. It
stays close to the Elasticsearch JSON DSL, mirroring its terminology and
structure while exposing the whole range of the DSL from Python either directly
using defined classes or a queryset-like expressions.

It also provides an optional
http://elasticsearch-dsl.readthedocs.org/en/latest/persistence.html#doctype[persistence
layer] for working with documents as Python objects in an ORM-like fashion:
defining mappings, retrieving and saving documents, wrapping the document data
in user-defined classes.
************************************************************************************


=== Installation

It can be installed with pip:

[source,sh]
------------------------------------
pip install elasticsearch
------------------------------------

=== Versioning

There are two branches for development - `master` and `1.x`. Master branch is
used to track all the changes for Elasticsearch 2.0 and beyond whereas 1.x
tracks Elasticsearch 1.*.

Releases with major version 1 (1.X.Y) are to be used with Elasticsearch 1.* and
later, 0.4 releases are meant to work with Elasticsearch 0.90.*.

The recommended way to set your requirements in your `setup.py` or
`requirements.txt` is:

[source,txt]
------------------------------------
    # Elasticsearch 2.x
    elasticsearch>=2.0.0,<3.0.0

    # Elasticsearch 1.x
    elasticsearch>=1.0.0,<2.0.0
------------------------------------

=== Example use

Simple use-case:

[source,python]
------------------------------------
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> from elasticsearch import Elasticsearch

# by default we connect to localhost:9200
>>> es = Elasticsearch()

# datetimes will be serialized
>>> es.index(index="my-index", doc_type="test-type", id=42, body={"any": "data", "timestamp": datetime.now()})
{u'_id': u'42', u'_index': u'my-index', u'_type': u'test-type', u'_version': 1, u'ok': True}

# but not deserialized
>>> es.get(index="my-index", doc_type="test-type", id=42)['_source']
{u'any': u'data', u'timestamp': u'2013-05-12T19:45:31.804229'}
------------------------------------

[NOTE]
All the API calls map the raw REST api as closely as possible, including
the distinction between required and optional arguments to the calls. This
means that the code makes distinction between positional and keyword arguments;
we, however, recommend that people use keyword arguments for all calls for
consistency and safety.

=== Features

The client's features include:

* translating basic Python data types to and from json (datetimes are not
  decoded for performance reasons)

* configurable automatic discovery of cluster nodes

* persistent connections

* load balancing (with pluggable selection strategy) across all available nodes

* failed connection penalization (time based - failed connections won't be
  retried until a timeout is reached)

* thread safety

* pluggable architecture

The client also contains a convenient set of
http://elasticsearch-py.readthedocs.org/en/master/helpers.html[helpers] for
some of the more engaging tasks like bulk indexing and reindexing.


=== License

Copyright 2013-2016 Elasticsearch

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.