elasticsearch/docs/reference/enrich-processor/recover-failure-document-processor.md

---

navigation_title: "Recover Failure Document" mapped_pages:

• https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/recover_failure_document-processor.html ---

Recover Failure Document processor [recover_failure_document-processor]

Recovers documents that have been stored in a data stream's failure store by restoring them to their original format. This processor is designed to work with documents that failed during ingestion and were automatically stored in the failure store with additional error metadata and document structure wrapping. The relevant failure store metadata is stashed under _ingest.pre_recovery.

The Recover Failure Document processor performs the following operations:

• Checks the document is a valid failure store document.
• Stores the pre-recovery metadata of the document (all document fields except for document.source) under the ingest metadata _ingest.pre_recovery.
• Overwrites _source with the original document source from the document.source field
• Restores the original document id from document._id to the document metadata
• Restores the original index name from document.index to the document metadata
• Restores the original routing value from document.routing to the document metadata (if present)

$$$recover_failure_document-options$$$

Name	Required	Default	Description
description	no	-	Description of the processor. Useful for describing the purpose of the processor or its configuration.
if	no	-	Conditionally execute the processor. See Conditionally run a processor.
ignore_failure	no	false	Ignore failures for the processor. See Handling pipeline failures.
on_failure	no	-	Handle failures for the processor. See Handling pipeline failures.
tag	no	-	Identifier for the processor. Useful for debugging and metrics.

Examples [recover_failure_document-processor-ex]

POST _ingest/pipeline/_simulate
{
    "pipeline": {
        "processors": [
            {
                "recover_failure_document": {}
            }
        ]
    },
    "docs": [
        {
            "_index": ".fs-my-datastream-ingest-2025.05.09-000001",
            "_id": "HnTJs5YBwrYNjPmaFcri",
            "_score": 1,
            "_source": {
                "@timestamp": "2025-05-09T06:41:24.775Z",
                "document": {
                    "index": "my-datastream-ingest",
                    "source": {
                        "@timestamp": "2025-04-21T00:00:00Z",
                        "counter_name": "test"
                    }
                },
                "error": {
                    "type": "illegal_argument_exception",
                    "message": "field [counter] not present as part of path [counter]",
                    "stack_trace": "j.l.IllegalArgumentException: field [counter] not present as part of path [counter] at o.e.i.IngestDocument.getFieldValue(IngestDocument.java: 202 at o.e.i.c.SetProcessor.execute(SetProcessor.java: 86) 14 more",
                    "pipeline_trace": [
                        "complicated-processor"
                    ],
                    "pipeline": "complicated-processor",
                    "processor_type": "set",
                    "processor_tag": "copy to new counter again"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

Which produces the following response:

{
    "docs": [
        {
            "doc": {
                "_index": "my-datastream-ingest",
                "_version": "-3",
                "_id": "HnTJs5YBwrYNjPmaFcri",
                "_source": {
                    "@timestamp": "2025-04-21T00:00:00Z",
                    "counter_name": "test"
                },
                "_ingest": {
                    "pre_recovery": {
                        "@timestamp": "2025-05-09T06:41:24.775Z",
                        "_index": ".fs-my-datastream-ingest-2025.05.09-000001",
                        "document": {
                            "index": "my-datastream-ingest"
                        },
                        "_id": "HnTJs5YBwrYNjPmaFcri",
                        "error": {
                            "pipeline": "complicated-processor",
                            "processor_type": "set",
                            "processor_tag": "copy to new counter again",
                            "pipeline_trace": [
                                "complicated-processor"
                            ],
                            "stack_trace": "j.l.IllegalArgumentException: field [counter] not present as part of path [counter] at o.e.i.IngestDocument.getFieldValue(IngestDocument.java: 202 at o.e.i.c.SetProcessor.execute(SetProcessor.java: 86) 14 more",
                            "type": "illegal_argument_exception",
                            "message": "field [counter] not present as part of path [counter]"
                        },
                        "_version": -3
                    },
                    "timestamp": "2025-09-04T22:32:12.800709Z"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

Documents which do not match the failure store document format result in errors:

POST _ingest/pipeline/_simulate

{
    "pipeline": {
        "processors": [
            {
                "recover_failure_document": {}
            }
        ]
    },
    "docs": [
        {
            "_index": ".fs-my-datastream-ingest-2025.05.09-000001",
            "_id": "HnTJs5YBwrYNjPmaFcri",
            "_score": 1,
            "_source": {
                "@timestamp": "2025-05-09T06:41:24.775Z",
                "error": {
                    "type": "illegal_argument_exception",
                    "message": "field [counter] not present as part of path [counter]",
                    "stack_trace": "j.l.IllegalArgumentException: field [counter] not present as part of path [counter] at o.e.i.IngestDocument.getFieldValue(IngestDocument.java: 202 at o.e.i.c.SetProcessor.execute(SetProcessor.java: 86) 14 more",
                    "pipeline_trace": [
                        "complicated-processor"
                    ],
                    "pipeline": "complicated-processor",
                    "processor_type": "set",
                    "processor_tag": "copy to new counter again"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

Which produces the following response:

{
    "docs": [
        {
            "error": {
                "root_cause": [
                    {
                        "type": "illegal_argument_exception",
                        "reason": "field [document] not present as part of path [document]"
                    }
                ],
                "type": "illegal_argument_exception",
                "reason": "field [document] not present as part of path [document]"
            }
        }
    ]
}