Refresh API

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Refreshes one or more indices. For data streams, the API refreshes the stream’s backing indices.

POST /my-index-000001/_refresh

Request

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POST <target>/_refresh

GET <target>/_refresh

POST /_refresh

GET /_refresh

Prerequisites

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  • If the Elasticsearch security features are enabled, you must have the maintenance or manage index privilege for the target data stream, index, or index alias.

Description

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Use the refresh API to explicitly refresh one or more indices. If the request targets a data stream, it refreshes the stream’s backing indices. A refresh makes all operations performed on an index since the last refresh available for search.

By default, Elasticsearch periodically refreshes indices every second, but only on indices that have received one search request or more in the last 30 seconds. You can change this default interval using the index.refresh_interval setting.

Refresh requests are synchronous and do not return a response until the refresh operation completes.

Refreshes are resource-intensive. To ensure good cluster performance, we recommend waiting for Elasticsearch’s periodic refresh rather than performing an explicit refresh when possible.

If your application workflow indexes documents and then runs a search to retrieve the indexed document, we recommend using the index API's refresh=wait_for query parameter option. This option ensures the indexing operation waits for a periodic refresh before running the search.

Path parameters

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<index>

(Optional, string) Comma-separated list or wildcard expression of index names used to limit the request.

To refresh all indices in the cluster, omit this parameter or use a value of _all or *.

Query parameters

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allow_no_indices

(Optional, Boolean) If false, the request returns an error if any wildcard expression, index alias, or _all value targets only missing or closed indices. This behavior applies even if the request targets other open indices. For example, a request targeting foo*,bar* returns an error if an index starts with foo but no index starts with bar.

Defaults to true.

expand_wildcards

(Optional, string) Type of index that wildcard expressions can match. If the request can target data streams, this argument determines whether wildcard expressions match hidden data streams. Supports comma-separated values, such as open,hidden. Valid values are:

all
Match any data stream or index, including hidden ones.
open
Match open, non-hidden indices. Also matches any non-hidden data stream.
closed
Match closed, non-hidden indices. Also matches any non-hidden data stream. Data streams cannot be closed.
hidden
Match hidden data streams and hidden indices. Must be combined with open, closed, or both.
none
Wildcard expressions are not accepted.

Defaults to open.

ignore_unavailable
(Optional, Boolean) If false, the request returns an error if it targets a missing or closed index. Defaults to false.

Examples

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Refresh several data streams and indices

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POST /my-index-000001,my-index-000002/_refresh

Refresh all data streams and indices in a cluster

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POST /_refresh