elasticsearch/docs/reference/docs/bulk.asciidoc

[[docs-bulk]]
== Bulk API

The bulk API makes it possible to perform many index/delete operations
in a single API call. This can greatly increase the indexing speed.

.Client support for bulk requests
*********************************************

Some of the officially supported clients provide helpers to assist with
bulk requests and reindexing of documents from one index to another:

Perl::

    See https://metacpan.org/pod/Search::Elasticsearch::Client::5_0::Bulk[Search::Elasticsearch::Client::5_0::Bulk]
    and https://metacpan.org/pod/Search::Elasticsearch::Client::5_0::Scroll[Search::Elasticsearch::Client::5_0::Scroll]

Python::

    See http://elasticsearch-py.readthedocs.org/en/master/helpers.html[elasticsearch.helpers.*]

*********************************************

The REST API endpoint is `/_bulk`, and it expects the following newline delimited JSON
(NDJSON) structure:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
action_and_meta_data\n
optional_source\n
action_and_meta_data\n
optional_source\n
....
action_and_meta_data\n
optional_source\n
--------------------------------------------------
// NOTCONSOLE

*NOTE*: the final line of data must end with a newline character `\n`. Each newline character
may be preceded by a carriage return `\r`. When sending requests to this endpoint the
`Content-Type` header should be set to `application/x-ndjson`.

The possible actions are `index`, `create`, `delete` and `update`.
`index` and `create` expect a source on the next
line, and have the same semantics as the `op_type` parameter to the
standard index API (i.e. create will fail if a document with the same
index and type exists already, whereas index will add or replace a
document as necessary). `delete` does not expect a source on the
following line, and has the same semantics as the standard delete API.
`update` expects that the partial doc, upsert and script and its options
are specified on the next line.

If you're providing text file input to `curl`, you *must* use the
`--data-binary` flag instead of plain `-d`. The latter doesn't preserve
newlines. Example:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
$ cat requests
{ "index" : { "_index" : "test", "_type" : "type1", "_id" : "1" } }
{ "field1" : "value1" }
$ curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/x-ndjson" -XPOST localhost:9200/_bulk --data-binary "@requests"; echo
{"took":7, "errors": false, "items":[{"index":{"_index":"test","_type":"type1","_id":"1","_version":1,"result":"created","forced_refresh":false}}]}
--------------------------------------------------
// NOTCONSOLE
// Not converting to console because this shows how curl works

Because this format uses literal `\n`'s as delimiters, please be sure
that the JSON actions and sources are not pretty printed. Here is an
example of a correct sequence of bulk commands:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
POST _bulk
{ "index" : { "_index" : "test", "_type" : "type1", "_id" : "1" } }
{ "field1" : "value1" }
{ "delete" : { "_index" : "test", "_type" : "type1", "_id" : "2" } }
{ "create" : { "_index" : "test", "_type" : "type1", "_id" : "3" } }
{ "field1" : "value3" }
{ "update" : {"_id" : "1", "_type" : "type1", "_index" : "test"} }
{ "doc" : {"field2" : "value2"} }
--------------------------------------------------
// CONSOLE

The result of this bulk operation is:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
{
   "took": 30,
   "errors": false,
   "items": [
      {
         "index": {
            "_index": "test",
            "_type": "type1",
            "_id": "1",
            "_version": 1,
            "result": "created",
            "_shards": {
               "total": 2,
               "successful": 1,
               "failed": 0
            },
            "status": 201,
            "_seq_no" : 0,
            "_primary_term": 1
         }
      },
      {
         "delete": {
            "_index": "test",
            "_type": "type1",
            "_id": "2",
            "_version": 1,
            "result": "not_found",
            "_shards": {
               "total": 2,
               "successful": 1,
               "failed": 0
            },
            "status": 404,
            "_seq_no" : 1,
            "_primary_term" : 2
         }
      },
      {
         "create": {
            "_index": "test",
            "_type": "type1",
            "_id": "3",
            "_version": 1,
            "result": "created",
            "_shards": {
               "total": 2,
               "successful": 1,
               "failed": 0
            },
            "status": 201,
            "_seq_no" : 2,
            "_primary_term" : 3
         }
      },
      {
         "update": {
            "_index": "test",
            "_type": "type1",
            "_id": "1",
            "_version": 2,
            "result": "updated",
            "_shards": {
                "total": 2,
                "successful": 1,
                "failed": 0
            },
            "status": 200,
            "_seq_no" : 3,
            "_primary_term" : 4
         }
      }
   ]
}
--------------------------------------------------
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"took": 30/"took": $body.took/]
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"index_uuid": .../"index_uuid": $body.items.3.update.error.index_uuid/]
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"_seq_no" : 0/"_seq_no" : $body.items.0.index._seq_no/]
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"_primary_term" : 1/"_primary_term" : $body.items.0.index._primary_term/]
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"_seq_no" : 1/"_seq_no" : $body.items.1.delete._seq_no/]
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"_primary_term" : 2/"_primary_term" : $body.items.1.delete._primary_term/]
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"_seq_no" : 2/"_seq_no" : $body.items.2.create._seq_no/]
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"_primary_term" : 3/"_primary_term" : $body.items.2.create._primary_term/]
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"_seq_no" : 3/"_seq_no" : $body.items.3.update._seq_no/]
// TESTRESPONSE[s/"_primary_term" : 4/"_primary_term" : $body.items.3.update._primary_term/]

The endpoints are `/_bulk`, `/{index}/_bulk`, and `{index}/{type}/_bulk`.
When the index or the index/type are provided, they will be used by
default on bulk items that don't provide them explicitly.

A note on the format. The idea here is to make processing of this as
fast as possible. As some of the actions will be redirected to other
shards on other nodes, only `action_meta_data` is parsed on the
receiving node side.

Client libraries using this protocol should try and strive to do
something similar on the client side, and reduce buffering as much as
possible.

The response to a bulk action is a large JSON structure with the
individual results of each action that was performed. The failure of a
single action does not affect the remaining actions.

There is no "correct" number of actions to perform in a single bulk
call. You should experiment with different settings to find the optimum
size for your particular workload.

If using the HTTP API, make sure that the client does not send HTTP
chunks, as this will slow things down.

[float]
[[bulk-versioning]]
=== Versioning

Each bulk item can include the version value using the
`_version`/`version` field. It automatically follows the behavior of the
index / delete operation based on the `_version` mapping. It also
support the `version_type`/`_version_type` (see <<index-versioning, versioning>>)

[float]
[[bulk-routing]]
=== Routing

Each bulk item can include the routing value using the
`_routing`/`routing` field. It automatically follows the behavior of the
index / delete operation based on the `_routing` mapping.

[float]
[[bulk-wait-for-active-shards]]
=== Wait For Active Shards

When making bulk calls, you can set the `wait_for_active_shards`
parameter to require a minimum number of shard copies to be active
before starting to process the bulk request. See
<<index-wait-for-active-shards,here>> for further details and a usage
example.

[float]
[[bulk-refresh]]
=== Refresh

Control when the changes made by this request are visible to search. See
<<docs-refresh,refresh>>.

[float]
[[bulk-update]]
=== Update

When using `update` action `_retry_on_conflict` can be used as field in
the action itself (not in the extra payload line), to specify how many
times an update should be retried in the case of a version conflict.

The `update` action payload, supports the following options: `doc`
(partial document), `upsert`, `doc_as_upsert`, `script`, `params` (for
script), `lang` (for script) and `_source`. See update documentation for details on
the options. Example with update actions:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
POST _bulk
{ "update" : {"_id" : "1", "_type" : "type1", "_index" : "index1", "_retry_on_conflict" : 3} }
{ "doc" : {"field" : "value"} }
{ "update" : { "_id" : "0", "_type" : "type1", "_index" : "index1", "_retry_on_conflict" : 3} }
{ "script" : { "source": "ctx._source.counter += params.param1", "lang" : "painless", "params" : {"param1" : 1}}, "upsert" : {"counter" : 1}}
{ "update" : {"_id" : "2", "_type" : "type1", "_index" : "index1", "_retry_on_conflict" : 3} }
{ "doc" : {"field" : "value"}, "doc_as_upsert" : true }
{ "update" : {"_id" : "3", "_type" : "type1", "_index" : "index1", "_source" : true} }
{ "doc" : {"field" : "value"} }
{ "update" : {"_id" : "4", "_type" : "type1", "_index" : "index1"} }
{ "doc" : {"field" : "value"}, "_source": true}
--------------------------------------------------
// CONSOLE
// TEST[continued]

[float]
[[bulk-security]]
=== Security

See <<url-access-control>>