Elasticsearch update mapping using json

Question

I want to change the type of a field from 'string' to 'date' (format: 'epoch_second' to be specific). Since there is no way to update the mappings of an existing index, I need to make a new index for which I mostly want to use the mapping from my existing index. Here is what I am using:

curl -XGET ' http://localhost:9200/sam/saga/_mapping?pretty ' >saga.json

to dump the mapping of the current index into a json file, the content of which is this:

{
  "sam" : {
    "mappings" : {
      "saga" : {
        "properties" : {
          "name" : {
            "type" : "long"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

then I replace

         "name" : {
           "type" : "long"
         }

with

         "name" : {
           "type" : "date"
         }

and save the new file as saga2.json. then run this

curl -XPUT ' http://localhost:9200/sam/_mapping/saga2 ' -d @saga2.json

However, when I check the mapping of the new index, all types have changed to "string" now.

I even have this problem using the Elasticsearch's example.

Does anyone know what is wrong?

Answer 1

You need to make one more change in your saga2.json file, namely the mapping type name saga -> saga2 (Now you probably need to rename it all to saga3

{
  "sam" : {
    "mappings" : {
      "saga2" : {                  <--- here
        "properties" : {
          "name" : {
            "type" : "date"        <--- and here
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Then only you can run this:

curl -XPUT 'http://localhost:9200/sam/_mapping/saga2' -d @saga2.json