What are API Conventions?

• API conventions in Elasticsearch refer to guidelines and best practices for designing and interacting with Elasticsearch APIs.
• These conventions ensure consistency, predictability and ease of use across different API endpoints and operations.
• By following these conventions, developers can streamline development workflows, improve code maintainability and enhance overall system performance.
• In Elasticsearch API conventions dictate the structure and syntax of requests and responses exchanged between clients and the Elasticsearch server.
• Understanding these conventions is essential for effectively using Elasticsearch’s capabilities.

1. Multiple Indices

• Elasticsearch allows us to work with multiple indices simultaneously, providing flexibility in organizing and managing our data.
• When interacting with multiple indices, we can specify them using comma-separated values in your API requests.

Example:

GET /index1,index2/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match_all": {}
  }
}

This request will search for documents across both index1 and index2.

2. Date Math Support in Index Name

• Elasticsearch supports date math expressions in index names, allowing us to dynamically reference indices based on dates or time intervals.
• This feature is particularly useful for managing time-series data efficiently.

Example:

GET /logs-2024.05.*/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match": {
      "status": "error"
    }
  }
}

This request will search for documents in indices matching the pattern logs-2024.05.*, enabling us to retrieve error logs for the current month.

3. URL-based Access Control

• Elasticsearch provides URL-based access control mechanisms to secure your cluster and restrict access to specific APIs based on user roles and permissions.
• By configuring role-based access control (RBAC), we can enforce fine-grained access policies, ensuring data confidentiality and integrity.

Example:

GET /_cluster/health

This request retrieves the health status of the Elasticsearch cluster. However, access to this API endpoint may be restricted based on the user’s role and permissions.

4. Common Options

• Elasticsearch APIs offer various common options that allow you to customize and control the behavior of your requests.
• These options include parameters such as size, from, sort, filter, and aggregations, enabling us to customize our queries to specific requirements.

Example:

GET /index/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match_all": {}
  },
  "size": 10,
  "sort": [
    {
      "timestamp": "desc"
    }
  ]
}

In this request, the size parameter limits the number of results to 10, and the sort parameter sorts the results based on the timestamp field in descending order.

An API or Application Programming Interface serves as a bridge between different software applications and enables them to communicate effectively. Elasticsearch is a powerful search and analytics engine that provides a robust API that allows users to interact with the Elasticsearch server over HTTP.

This RESTful API follows to the principles of Representational State Transfer (REST) and offers a standardized way to perform various operations such as indexing, searching, updating, and deleting documents. In this article, We will learn about the API Conventions in Elasticsearch by understanding the RESTful APIs, What are API Conventions with their types, and also Common API Conventions in Elasticsearch in detail.