Text fields are not optimised for operations that require per-document : Elasticsearch

Question

This is my Entity:

public class RecentTransactionBo {

    @JsonProperty("timestamp")
    @Field(type = FieldType.Date, format = DateFormat.basic_date_time)
    @Id
    @Temporal(TemporalType.DATE)
    private Date creationDate;
    private List<String> transactionId;

}

And I'm doing Sort operation on it:

Iterable<RecentTransactionBo> recentTransactionBoIterable = recentTransactionDao.findAll(Sort.by(Sort.Direction.DESC, "creationDate"));

I'm getting the following error:

2020-09-08 02:42:29.116 ERROR 7116 --- [nio-8090-exec-1] o.a.c.c.C.[.[.[/].[dispatcherServlet]    : Servlet.service() for servlet [dispatcherServlet] in context with path [] threw exception [Request processing failed; nested exception is org.springframework.data.elasticsearch.UncategorizedElasticsearchException: Elasticsearch exception [type=search_phase_execution_exception, reason=all shards failed]; nested exception is ElasticsearchStatusException[Elasticsearch exception [type=search_phase_execution_exception, reason=all shards failed]]; nested: ElasticsearchException[Elasticsearch exception [type=illegal_argument_exception, reason=Text fields are not optimised for operations that require per-document field data like aggregations and sorting, so these operations are disabled by default. Please use a keyword field instead. Alternatively, set fielddata=true on [creationDate] in order to load field data by uninverting the inverted index. Note that this can use significant memory.]]; nested: ElasticsearchException[Elasticsearch exception [type=illegal_argument_exception, reason=Text fields are not optimised for operations that require per-document field data like aggregations and sorting, so these operations are disabled by default. Please use a keyword field instead. Alternatively, set fielddata=true on [creationDate] in order to load field data by uninverting the inverted index. Note that this can use significant memory.]];] with root cause

    org.elasticsearch.ElasticsearchException: Elasticsearch exception [type=illegal_argument_exception, reason=Text fields are not optimised for operations that require per-document field data like aggregations and sorting, so these operations are disabled by default. Please use a keyword field instead. Alternatively, set fielddata=true on [creationDate] in order to load field data by uninverting the inverted index. Note that this can use significant memory.]

My DAO looks like this.

@Repository
public interface RecentTransactionDao extends ElasticsearchRepository<RecentTransactionBo, Date> {

}

How do I resolve this and what's the mistake I'm doing? I'm using version 7.8.1

Answer 1

To correctly resolve this you should create a correct mapping and set required fields to be of keyword type.

Other solution is to run the command:

PUT <your_index_name>/_mapping
{
  "properties": {
    "creationDate": { 
      "type":     "text",
      "fielddata": true
    },
    "host.name": { 
      "type":     "text",
      "fielddata": true
    }
  }
}

Above I am setting the fielddata properties on 2 fields - creationDate and host.name as an example how to set it on multiple fields in one call. Elastic will give you only one name at a time, so you may need to run the command multiple times, unless you know all the problematic fields beforehand.