In addition to reading this guide, we recommend you run the Elasticsearch Health Check-Up. It will detect issues and improve your Elasticsearch performance by analyzing your shard sizes, threadpools, memory, snapshots, disk watermarks and more.The Elasticsearch Check-Up is free and requires no installation.
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 resolve issues in your deployment and locate their root cause, try AutoOps for Elasticsearch. It diagnoses problems by analyzing hundreds of metrics collected by a lightweight agent and offers guidance for resolving them. Try AutoOps for free.
Quick links
- Overview
- Deleting a Document
- Deleting Multiple Documents
- Deleting an Index
- Deleting All Indices
- Best Practices
- Potential Issues
- Conclusion
Elasticsearch cURL Delete: Best Practices and Examples
Overview
Deleting documents and indices in Elasticsearch is an essential part of managing your data. This article will focus on using cURL, a command-line tool, to perform delete operations in Elasticsearch. We will discuss best practices, provide examples, and cover potential issues that may arise during the process.
1. Deleting a Document
To delete a specific document, use the DELETE request followed by the index, type (if using Elasticsearch 6.x or earlier), and document ID. Here’s an example:
curl -X DELETE "http://localhost:9200/my_index/_doc/1"
Replace `my_index` with the name of your index and `1` with the document ID you want to delete.
2. Deleting Multiple Documents
To delete multiple documents that match a specific query, use the Delete By Query API. Here’s an example:
curl -X POST "http://localhost:9200/my_index/_delete_by_query" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d' { "query": { "match": { "field_name": "value" } } }'
Replace `my_index` with the name of your index, `field_name` with the field you want to match, and `value` with the value you want to filter by.
3. Deleting an Index
To delete an entire index, use the DELETE request followed by the index name. Here’s an example:
curl -X DELETE "http://localhost:9200/my_index"
Replace `my_index` with the name of the index you want to delete.
4. Deleting All Indices
To delete all indices, use the DELETE request followed by a wildcard `_all`. Here’s an example:
curl -X DELETE "http://localhost:9200/_all"
Warning: This operation will delete all indices in your Elasticsearch cluster. Use with caution.
5. Best Practices
- Always backup your data before performing delete operations.
- Use aliases to switch between indices when performing delete operations to minimize downtime.
- Monitor the progress of delete operations using the Task Management API.
- Consider using the Delete By Query API with a timeout parameter to avoid long-running delete operations.
6. Potential Issues
- Deleted documents are not immediately removed from disk. Elasticsearch marks them as deleted and removes them during the next segment merge.
- Deleting large numbers of documents can cause performance issues. Consider using the Delete By Query API with a smaller batch size and the `wait_for_completion` parameter set to `false` to mitigate this issue.
- Be cautious when using wildcards in delete operations, as they can unintentionally delete important data.
Conclusion
In conclusion, using cURL to perform delete operations in Elasticsearch is a powerful method to manage your data. By following best practices and being aware of potential issues, you can ensure that your delete operations are efficient and safe.