Document versioning in Elasticsearch - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Document versioning

📖 Scenario: You are managing a collection of documents in Elasticsearch. Each document has a version number to keep track of updates. You want to practice how to create documents, update them with version control, and retrieve the latest version.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Elasticsearch workflow to create a document with a version, update it by increasing the version, and retrieve the latest version of the document.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an index and add a document with a specific version number

Set a variable for the document ID

Update the document with a new version number using version control

Retrieve and print the latest version of the document

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Document versioning is important in content management systems, collaborative editing, and data synchronization to avoid conflicts and keep track of changes.

💼 Career

Understanding Elasticsearch document versioning helps backend developers and data engineers maintain data integrity and implement safe updates in distributed systems.

1

Create an index and add a document with version 1

Use the Elasticsearch PUT API to create an index called library and add a document with _id book1 that has a field title set to "Elasticsearch Basics" and a version number 1.

Elasticsearch

# Use PUT to create index 'library' and add document 'book1' with version 1
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the PUT method with the index name library and document ID book1. Include the fields title and version in the JSON body.

2

Set a variable for the document ID

Create a variable called doc_id and set it to the string "book1" to store the document ID.

Elasticsearch

PUT /library/_doc/book1
{
  "title": "Elasticsearch Basics",
  "version": 1
}

# Create variable doc_id with value "book1"
# Your code here

Need a hint?

In your client or script, assign the string "book1" to a variable named doc_id.

3

Update the document with version 2 using version control

Use the Elasticsearch POST update API to update the document with ID stored in doc_id in the library index. Change the title to "Elasticsearch Advanced" and set the version to 2. Use optimistic concurrency control by specifying if_seq_no and if_primary_term as 0 and 1 respectively.

Elasticsearch

PUT /library/_doc/book1
{
  "title": "Elasticsearch Basics",
  "version": 1
}

doc_id = "book1"

# Update document with id doc_id to title "Elasticsearch Advanced" and version 2
# Use if_seq_no: 0 and if_primary_term: 1
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the _update API with query parameters if_seq_no=0 and if_primary_term=1 to update the document safely.

4

Retrieve and print the latest version of the document

Use the Elasticsearch GET API to retrieve the document with ID book1 from the library index. Print the title and version fields from the response.

Elasticsearch

PUT /library/_doc/book1
{
  "title": "Elasticsearch Basics",
  "version": 1
}

doc_id = "book1"

POST /library/_update/book1?if_seq_no=0&if_primary_term=1
{
  "doc": {
    "title": "Elasticsearch Advanced",
    "version": 2
  }
}

# Retrieve document book1 and print title and version
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the GET /library/_doc/book1 API to get the document. The response will include the latest title and version.