Managing mappings include the mapping

After creating an index, the next step is to add some type mappings to it. We have already seen how to include a mapping via the REST API in Chapter 4, Basic Operations.

Getting ready

You need an up-and-running Elasticsearch installation, as we described in the Downloading and installing Elasticsearch recipe in Chapter 2, Downloading and Setup.

You also need the Python installed packages of Creating a client recipe of this chapter.

The code for this recipe is in the chapter_16/mapping_management.py file.

How to do it…

After having initialized a client and created an index, the steps for managing the indices are as follows:

1. Create a mapping.

2. Retrieve a mapping.

These steps are easily managed with the following code:

1. We initialize the client:

           import elasticsearch
           es = elasticsearch.Elasticsearch()
   

2. We create an index:

           index_name = "my_index"
           type_name = "my_type"
           if es.indices.exists(index_name):
      ...