Document ID strategies (auto vs manual) in Elasticsearch - Hands-On Comparison

Document ID strategies (auto vs manual)

📖 Scenario: You are managing a small online store's product catalog using Elasticsearch. You want to add products to the catalog and decide how to assign document IDs. Sometimes you want Elasticsearch to create IDs automatically, and other times you want to assign your own IDs to keep track of products easily.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to add documents to Elasticsearch with both automatic and manual document IDs, and see the difference in how documents are stored and retrieved.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an index called products

Add a product document with an automatic ID

Add a product document with a manual ID

Retrieve and print the documents to see their IDs

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

In real online stores or apps, you often need to store product data in Elasticsearch. Choosing between automatic and manual document IDs helps you manage and find products easily.

💼 Career

Knowing how to manage document IDs in Elasticsearch is important for backend developers and data engineers working with search and data storage systems.

1

Create the products index

Write a command to create an Elasticsearch index called products.

Elasticsearch

# Write the command to create the 'products' index
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the PUT method with the index name products to create the index.

2

Add a product with an automatic document ID

Write a command to add a product document with name as "Coffee Mug" and price as 12.99 to the products index. Let Elasticsearch create the document ID automatically by not specifying it.

Elasticsearch

PUT /products
{}

# Add a product document with automatic ID below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use POST /products/_doc to add a document with an automatic ID.

3

Add a product with a manual document ID

Write a command to add a product document with name as "Tea Cup" and price as 9.99 to the products index. Use the manual document ID tea-cup-001.

Elasticsearch

PUT /products
{}

POST /products/_doc
{
  "name": "Coffee Mug",
  "price": 12.99
}

# Add a product document with manual ID 'tea-cup-001' below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use PUT /products/_doc/tea-cup-001 to add a document with a manual ID.

4

Retrieve and print the documents to see their IDs

Write commands to retrieve and print the documents with the manual ID tea-cup-001 and the automatically created document ID for the "Coffee Mug" product. Use the GET method for both.

Elasticsearch

PUT /products
{}

POST /products/_doc
{
  "name": "Coffee Mug",
  "price": 12.99
}

PUT /products/_doc/tea-cup-001
{
  "name": "Tea Cup",
  "price": 9.99
}

# Retrieve and print the document with manual ID 'tea-cup-001'
# Retrieve and print the document with automatic ID (replace  with actual ID)
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use GET /products/_doc/tea-cup-001 to get the manual ID document. For the automatic ID, you need to know the ID from the response or list documents.