Templates and dynamic templates

In the Mappings configuration section of Chapter 2, Indexing Your Data, we read about mappings, how they are created, and how the type-determining mechanism works. Now we will get into more advanced topics; we will show you how to dynamically create mappings for new indices and how to apply some logic to the templates.

Templates

As we have seen earlier in the book, the index configuration and mappings in particular can be complicated beasts. It would be very nice if there was a possibility of defining one or more mappings once and using them in every newly created index without the need of sending them every time an index is created. Elasticsearch creators predicted this and implemented a feature called index templates. Each template defines a pattern, which is compared to a newly created index name. When both of them match, values defined in the template are copied to the index structure definition. When multiple templates match the name of the newly created...