Deleting documents in Elasticsearch - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Deleting documents

📖 Scenario: You manage a small online store's product catalog stored in Elasticsearch. Sometimes, products are discontinued and need to be removed from the catalog.

🎯 Goal: You will learn how to delete documents from an Elasticsearch index using the document ID and a query.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an index with sample product documents

Set a variable for the product ID to delete

Write the command to delete a document by ID

Write the command to delete documents by a query

Print the deletion responses

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Deleting outdated or discontinued products from an online store's Elasticsearch catalog keeps the data clean and relevant.

💼 Career

Knowing how to delete documents by ID or query is essential for managing data lifecycle in Elasticsearch, a common skill for backend developers and data engineers.

1

Create the product index with sample documents

Create an index called products with three documents having these exact IDs and fields:
1: {"name": "Laptop", "price": 1200},
2: {"name": "Smartphone", "price": 800},
3: {"name": "Tablet", "price": 400}.
Use the Elasticsearch index API calls as shown.

Elasticsearch

# Use the Elasticsearch index API to add documents
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the POST /products/_doc/{id} endpoint to add each product document.

2

Set the product ID to delete

Create a variable called product_id and set it to the string "2" to represent the product to delete.

Elasticsearch

POST /products/_doc/1
{
  "name": "Laptop",
  "price": 1200
}

POST /products/_doc/2
{
  "name": "Smartphone",
  "price": 800
}

POST /products/_doc/3
{
  "name": "Tablet",
  "price": 400
}

# Create a variable called product_id and set it to "2"
# Your code here

Need a hint?

In your client or script, assign the string "2" to a variable named product_id.

3

Delete the product document by ID

Write the Elasticsearch DELETE API call to delete the document with ID stored in product_id from the products index.

Elasticsearch

POST /products/_doc/1
{
  "name": "Laptop",
  "price": 1200
}

POST /products/_doc/2
{
  "name": "Smartphone",
  "price": 800
}

POST /products/_doc/3
{
  "name": "Tablet",
  "price": 400
}

product_id = "2"

# Write the DELETE API call to remove the document with ID product_id
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use DELETE /products/_doc/{product_id} to delete the document by ID.

4

Delete products by query and print results

Write the Elasticsearch POST API call to delete all products with price less than 1000 using _delete_by_query on the products index.
Then print the response showing how many documents were deleted.

Elasticsearch

POST /products/_doc/1
{
  "name": "Laptop",
  "price": 1200
}

POST /products/_doc/2
{
  "name": "Smartphone",
  "price": 800
}

POST /products/_doc/3
{
  "name": "Tablet",
  "price": 400
}

product_id = "2"

DELETE /products/_doc/2

# Write the _delete_by_query API call to delete products with price < 1000
# Print the number of deleted documents
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use POST /products/_delete_by_query with a range query on price less than 1000.