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May 25, 2018
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Document index name limitations #30826

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983b466
[Docs] Document limitations to index names
polyfractal May 23, 2018
a442eb1
Tweak: bytes not characters
polyfractal May 24, 2018
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50 changes: 27 additions & 23 deletions docs/reference/indices/create-index.asciidoc
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,16 +1,39 @@
[[indices-create-index]]
== Create Index

The create index API allows to instantiate an index. Elasticsearch
provides support for multiple indices, including executing operations
across several indices.
The Create Index API is used to manually create an index in Elasticsearch. All documents in Elasticsearch
are stored inside of one index or another.

The most basic command is the following:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
PUT twitter
--------------------------------------------------
// CONSOLE

This create an index named `twitter` with all default setting.

[NOTE]
.Index name limitations
======================================================
There are several limitations to what you can name your index. The complete list of limitations are:

- Lowercase only
- Cannot include `\`, `/`, `*`, `?`, `"`, `<`, `>`, `|`, ` ` (space character), `,`, `#`
- Indices prior to 7.0 could contain a colon (`:`), but that's been deprecated and won't be supported in 7.0+
- Cannot start with `-`, `_`, `+`
- Cannot be `.` or ``..`
- Cannot be longer than 255 bytes (note it is bytes, so multi-byte characters will count towards the 255 limit faster)

======================================================

[float]
[[create-index-settings]]
=== Index Settings

Each index created can have specific settings
associated with it.
associated with it, defined in the body:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
Expand All @@ -28,25 +51,6 @@ PUT twitter
<1> Default for `number_of_shards` is 1
<2> Default for `number_of_replicas` is 1 (ie one replica for each primary shard)

The above second curl example shows how an index called `twitter` can be
created with specific settings for it using http://www.yaml.org[YAML].
In this case, creating an index with 3 shards, each with 2 replicas. The
index settings can also be defined with http://www.json.org[JSON]:

[source,js]
--------------------------------------------------
PUT twitter
{
"settings" : {
"index" : {
"number_of_shards" : 3,
"number_of_replicas" : 2
}
}
}
--------------------------------------------------
// CONSOLE

or more simplified

[source,js]
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