Open index API

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Opens a closed index.

POST /twitter/_open

Request

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POST /<index>/_open

Description

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You use the open index API to re-open closed indices.

A closed index is blocked for read/write operations and does not allow all operations that opened indices allow. It is not possible to index documents or to search for documents in a closed index. This allows closed indices to not have to maintain internal data structures for indexing or searching documents, resulting in a smaller overhead on the cluster.

When opening or closing an index, the master is responsible for restarting the index shards to reflect the new state of the index. The shards will then go through the normal recovery process. The data of opened/closed indices is automatically replicated by the cluster to ensure that enough shard copies are safely kept around at all times.

You can open and close multiple indices. An error is thrown if the request explicitly refers to a missing index. This behaviour can be disabled using the ignore_unavailable=true parameter.

All indices can be opened or closed at once using _all as the index name or specifying patterns that identify them all (e.g. *).

Identifying indices via wildcards or _all can be disabled by setting the action.destructive_requires_name flag in the config file to true. This setting can also be changed via the cluster update settings api.

Closed indices consume a significant amount of disk-space which can cause problems in managed environments. Closing indices can be disabled via the cluster settings API by setting cluster.indices.close.enable to false. The default is true.

Wait For active shards

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Because opening or closing an index allocates its shards, the wait_for_active_shards setting on index creation applies to the _open and _close index actions as well.

Path parameters

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<index>

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

To open all indices, use _all or *. To disallow the opening of indices with _all or wildcard expressions, change the action.destructive_requires_name cluster setting to true. You can update this setting in the elasticsearch.yml file or using the cluster update settings API.

Query parameters

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allow_no_indices

(Optional, boolean) If true, the request does not return an error if a wildcard expression or _all value retrieves only missing or closed indices.

This parameter also applies to index aliases that point to a missing or closed index.

expand_wildcards

(Optional, string) Controls what kind of indices that wildcard expressions can expand to. Valid values are:

all
Expand to open and closed indices.
open
Expand only to open indices.
closed
Expand only to closed indices.
none
Wildcard expressions are not accepted.

Defaults to closed.

ignore_unavailable
(Optional, boolean) If true, missing or closed indices are not included in the response. Defaults to false.
wait_for_active_shards

(Optional, string) The number of shard copies that must be active before proceeding with the operation. Set to all or any positive integer up to the total number of shards in the index (number_of_replicas+1). Default: 1, the primary shard.

See Active shards.

timeout
(Optional, time units) Specifies the period of time to wait for a response. If no response is received before the timeout expires, the request fails and returns an error. Defaults to 30s.
master_timeout
(Optional, time units) Specifies the period of time to wait for a connection to the master node. If no response is received before the timeout expires, the request fails and returns an error. Defaults to 30s.

Examples

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A closed index can be re-opened like this:

POST /my_index/_open

The API returns the following response:

{
    "acknowledged" : true,
    "shards_acknowledged" : true
}