Why is ElasticSearch putting strings in arrays?

Question

I'm adding documents to an new index I created in elasticsearch (v7.15.1). I have a nested field I explicitly mapped:

curl -X PUT "localhost:9200/newIndex/_mapping?pretty" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d'
{
    "properties": {
        "authors": {
            "type": "nested"
        }
    }
}
'

both properties under "authors" are strings. When adding documents to the index, each property under author is an array containing the string,

ex.

"author": ["John Smith"]

instead of

"author": "John Smith"

I've tried explicitly mapping the nested field as well as text, and I got the same result. Is there anyway to prevent this?

Vakhtang · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-27 19:32:59Z

1

You don't need nested type. The nested field used for array of the Objects, not for array of the Strings. So you can use mapping like:

{
    "properties": {
        "authors": {
            "type": "keyword"
        }
    }
}

Or if you want to search only first name, you can use "type" : "text", or both of them with multifield '

answered Oct 27, 2021 at 19:32

Vakhtang

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2 Comments

docphilstone Over a year ago

Sorry, I did not explain fully, the authors field is an array of objects. Each object represents a single author with multiple fields. It is the values of the author fields that are strings, but being uploaded as strings within arrays.

Vakhtang Over a year ago

Am i understud right, that your mapping supposed to be like: { "properties": { "authors": { "type": "nested", "properties":{ "name" :{ "type": "keyword" }, "user" :{ "type": "keyword" } } } } } Could you share the data example?

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