Add alias to index from template?

Question

How do you add an alias to an index using a template?

If I look at my current templates there are empty sections named aliases in mappings and in the parent of mappings. I can't seem to find much documentation indicating their use. What I'm hoping to do is not have to execute an alias add after the index is created.

Thanks, Pat

Answer 1

When creating an index template, the aliases section contains the aliases that you want to be created at the same time a new index is created. For instance, with the command below, every time a new index whose name matches index* is created, then the aliases named my_alias1 and my_alias2 are also created at the same time.

curl -XPUT localhost:9200/_template/my_template -d '
{
    "template" : "index*",
    "settings" : {
        "number_of_shards" : 1
    },
    "aliases" : {
        "my_alias1" : {},
        "my_alias2" : {}
    }
}'

UPDATE

Note that as of ES6, template has been renamed to index_patterns:

curl -XPUT localhost:9200/_template/my_template -d '
{
    "index_patterns" : "index*",
    "settings" : {
        "number_of_shards" : 1
    },
    "aliases" : {
        "my_alias1" : {},
        "my_alias2" : {}
    }
}'