Before you begin reading this guide, we recommend you try running the Elasticsearch Error Check-Up which analyzes 2 JSON files to detect many configuration errors.
To easily locate the root cause and resolve this issue try AutoOps for Elasticsearch & OpenSearch. It diagnoses problems by analyzing hundreds of metrics collected by a lightweight agent and offers guidance for resolving them.
This guide will help you check for common problems that cause the log ” Failed to parse aliases ” to appear. To understand the issues related to this log, read the explanation below about the following Elasticsearch concepts: admin, indices, template and aliases.
Overview
A template in Elasticsearch falls into one of the two following categories and is indexed inside Elasticsearch using its dedicated endpoint:
- Index templates, which are a way to define a set of rules including index settings, mappings and an index pattern. The template is applied automatically whenever a new index is created with the matching pattern. Templates are also used to dynamically apply custom mapping for the fields which are not predefined inside existing mapping.
- Search templates, which help in defining templates for search queries using mustache scripting language. These templates act as a placeholder for variables defined inside the search queries.
Examples
Create a dynamic index template
PUT /_template/template_1?pretty
{
"index_patterns": [
"logs*",
"api*"
],
"settings": {
"number_of_shards": 2
},
"mappings": {
"dynamic_templates": [
{
"strings": {
"match_mapping_type": "string",
"mapping": {
"type": "keyword"
}
}
}
],
"properties": {
"host_name": {
"type": "keyword"
},
"created_at": {
"type": "date"
}
}
}
}Create a search template
POST /_scripts/search_template_1?pretty
{
"script": {
"lang": "mustache",
"source": {
"query": {
"match": {
"description": "{{query_string}}"
}
}
}
}
}Executing a search query using search template
GET /_search/template?pretty
{
"id": "search_template_1",
"params": {
"query_string": "hello world"
}
}The search request will be executed by default on all the indices available in the cluster and can be limited to particular indices using an index parameter.
Notes
- A dynamic index template is always useful when you do not know the field names in advance and want to control their mapping as per the business use case.
Log Context
Log “Failed to parse aliases”classname is PutIndexTemplateRequest.java We extracted the following from Elasticsearch source code for those seeking an in-depth context :
while ((parser.nextToken()) != XContentParser.Token.END_OBJECT) {
alias(Alias.fromXContent(parser));
}
return this;
} catch(IOException e) {
throw new ElasticsearchParseException("Failed to parse aliases"; e);
}
}
/**
* Adds an alias that will be added when the index gets created.
See how you can use AutoOps to resolve issues
