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🏗️ Creating and Managing Indices

An index is where your documents live. It defines how data is stored, searched, and analyzed.

Let’s go through the main methods to create and manage indices.

📘 Method 1: Using Dev Tools (Kibana Console)​

Open Kibana → Dev Tools and paste the following:

PUT hcm-employees
{
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "name": { "type": "text" },
      "position": { "type": "text" },
      "email": { "type": "keyword" },
      "location": { "type": "geo_point" },
      "timestamp": { "type": "date" }
    }
  }
}

✅ This creates an index called hcm-employees with fields for name, email, location, etc.

🌐 Method 2: Using the REST API​

You can create an index from any HTTP client, like curl, Postman, or from your app:

curl -X PUT https://es.healthcare-manufaktur.de/hcm-employees \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "name": { "type": "text" },
      "position": { "type": "text" },
      "email": { "type": "keyword" },
      "location": { "type": "geo_point" },
      "timestamp": { "type": "date" }
    }
  }
}'

🛠️ Updating Mappings​

If your index already exists, you can add new fields, but cannot change the type of existing ones:

PUT hcm-employees/_mapping
{
  "properties": {
    "department": { "type": "keyword" }
  }
}

🚫 You cannot change an existing field type (e.g., from text to keyword). You’ll need to reindex for that.

🗑️ Deleting an Index​

To completely delete an index and all its documents:

DELETE hcm-employees

🔒 Use with caution! This action is irreversible.

📂 Listing All Indices​

To list all indices in your Elasticsearch cluster:

GET _cat/indices?v

You'll see index names, document counts, disk usage, and health status.

📊 Make Your Index Usable in Kibana​

Before you can search or visualize data:

  1. Go to Stack Management → Data Views
  2. Click Create Data View
  3. Enter a pattern like: hcm-employees*
  4. Choose the timestamp field (if your docs include dates)

Now your index is ready to be explored in Discover or used in Dashboards!

✅ Next Up: Adding Data​

Now that you know how to create indices, let’s learn how to:

  • Add documents
  • Update fields
  • Use bulk imports

➡️ Head over to the "Adding and Updating Documents" page next!

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