How to create an ElasticSearch Type and make it searchable inside the Index

In ES a type is the equivalent of a class/data model/object.

In ES the fields are the equivalent of a class/data model/object's properties.

A document is the result of what is actually getting searched inside the index. If inside the index there are 2 pairs of Sneaker types then the index would have 2 documents inside of it.

Mappings is 1- how you make your type searchable inside the index and 2- how you set the index so that the type and its fields would equate to an object/data model and its properties. This type and its fields are what you’re going to run your searches on.

I first created a type by creating a file named sneakerfile.jsonand added this code inside of it

{   "sneakers": { // this is a type      "properties": {        "condition": { // it has a field named ‘condition’          "type": "string"        },        "name": {  // it has a field named ‘name’          "type": "string"        }      }   }}// sneakers is being treated like my Sneakers Swift class/dataModel from the original question// the fields “condition” & “name” are of type String just like my Swift's Sneakers’ class' properties (since Optionals are a Swift thing that’s not included here)

Then inside terminal I created my ES index which is named firebase by running:

curl -XPOST <BONSAI_URL>/firebase

1- Now that I have an index named firebase, 2- an ES type named sneakers, 3- I now need to make the type searchable in the index by 4- populating the _mappings key with it:

curl -XPOST <BONSAI_URL>/firebase/_mappings/sneakers -d@sneakerfile.json

Now that I want to see what's inside my mappings key when I run:

curl -XGET <BONSAI_URL>/firebase/_mappings?pretty

I'll get

{  "firebase" : {    "mappings" : {      "sneakers" : {        "properties" : {          "condition" : {            "type" : "string"          },          "name" : {            "type" : "string"          }        }      }    }  }}// Final Result -the index named firebase now can return documents of type ‘sneakers’. You can search for those documents by searching on the ‘condition’ and ‘name’ fields

As a side note the above answer definitely 100% works so you can use it. I haven’t been back to this answer in over 2 yrs but maybe try creating and setting another type to a sneakersTestFile.json like this. TEST TEST TEST to see what happens. I haven’t tried this below myself but I know it’s easier to read.

{   "sneakersTest": {        "condition": "string"        "name": "string"   }}

Assuming you already created the index named firebase run:

curl -XPOST <BONSAI_URL>/firebase/_mappings/sneakersTest -d@sneakersTestFile.json

Then run:

curl -XGET <BONSAI_URL>/firebase/_mappings?pretty

Search it to see what happens