Creating an index in Elasticsearch - Try It Yourself

Creating an index

📖 Scenario: You are setting up a simple search system for a small library. You want to create a place to store book information so you can find books easily later.

🎯 Goal: Create an Elasticsearch index called library with basic settings and mappings to store book titles and authors.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an index named library

Add settings with number_of_shards set to 1

Add mappings for title and author fields as text

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Creating an index is the first step in storing and searching data efficiently in Elasticsearch, useful for search engines, catalogs, and logs.

💼 Career

Knowing how to create and configure indexes is essential for roles like data engineer, backend developer, and search specialist working with Elasticsearch.

1

Create the index name

Write a JSON object to create an index named library with empty settings and mappings objects.

Elasticsearch

{
  "settings": {},
  "mappings": {}
  # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Start by naming the index library and add empty settings and mappings objects.

2

Add index settings

Add a settings object with number_of_shards set to 1 inside the index creation JSON.

Elasticsearch

{
  "settings": {
    "number_of_shards": 1
  },
  "mappings": {}
  # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Inside settings, set "number_of_shards" to 1 to keep it simple.

3

Add mappings for book fields

Add a mappings object with properties defining title and author fields as text type.

Elasticsearch

{
  "settings": {
    "number_of_shards": 1
  },
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "title": { "type": "text" },
      "author": { "type": "text" }
    }
  }
  # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Inside mappings, add properties with title and author as text fields.

4

Complete the index creation JSON

Ensure the JSON object includes settings with number_of_shards set to 1, and mappings with title and author as text fields.

Elasticsearch

{
  "settings": {
    "number_of_shards": 1
  },
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "title": { "type": "text" },
      "author": { "type": "text" }
    }
  }
  # Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Double-check that all parts are included: settings, and mappings with correct fields.