Problem Statement

You need to communicate with ElasticSearch to perform the search or the CRUD operations.

Solution

You can interact with ElasticSearch using the RESTful API over port 9200.

Additionally , ElasticSearch has the official clients for various programming languages like .NET , Java , Ruby etc.

The format of the request of ElasticSearch is as specified below.

<VERB> <PROTOCOL> ://<HOST>/<PATH>?<QUERYSTRING>

Additionally , it can contain the request body.

1. The VERB can be GET , POST , PUT , HEAD , DELETE.

2. Protocol can be http or https

3. HOST refers to the host name of the elasticsearch cluster . Eg : localhost

4. PORT – This refers to the port number where the ElasticSearch is running. The default port number where ElasticSearch runs in 9200.

5. QUERYSTRING is the optional query string parameters used for the request URL.

6. The body contains the JSON encoded request body (if needed).

When testing the ElasticSearch API , you might want a graphical client like Fiddler or Chrome Sense plug-in to try,

Chrome plug-in called “Sense” is a excellent tool to test ElasticSearch API. It provides a simple user interface for using the ElasticSearch REST API. Some of the features include autocomplete for queries , copy and paste the request in curl format etc. 

You can search for the Sense plugin from your Google Chrome browser and install it.

Once you have installed the Sense plugin , you will see its icon in the upper right corner in Google Chrome. Just tap on the icon and you are ready to start.

The Query can be entered in the left sidebar. The response will be shown in the content area.

This is the query in curl which displays the number of documents in the ElasticSearch cluster

curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/_count?pretty' -d ' 
{   
    "query": 
    {        
        "match_all": {}    
        
    }   
}

The response of the above query is

{
   "count": 10,
   "_shards": {
      "total": 15,
      "successful": 15,
      "failed": 0
   }
}

Problem Statement

You need to download , install and Elastic Search on Windows and Mac OS X machines.

Solution

You can download ElasticSearch which is available in various formats like Zip , Tar.gz from https://www.elastic.co/downloads/elasticsearch .

The installation is pretty simple and infact you dont need to do  anything special to install ElasticSearch on your machine.

You need to extract or uncompress the file.

Note : You need to ensure that you are running the latest version of the JDK on your machine and the class path is configured on your System Environment variables.

How to run ElasticSearch on Windows machine ?

To run ElasticSearch on Windows PC , run the elasticsearch.bat file from the bin folder under the extracted folder path. This will start ElasticSearch in the foreground using the console.

How to shutdown ElasticSearch in Windows ?

To shutdown ElasticSearch in Windows , press Ctrl+C shortcut key in the command window or close the command window.

If you dont have the JAVA_HOME environment variable set , you will be prompted with a message “JAVA_HOME environment variable must be set!”.

How to run ElasticSearch on Mac OSX machine ?

If you want to run ElasticSearch on Mac OS X , just run the elasticsearch shell script from the bin folder.

Testing Your ElasticSearch

You can test your ElasticSearch by following the below steps
1. Launch the Web browser (Eg : Microsoft Edge , Google Chrome etc).
2. Enter the following URL
http://localhost:9200/

3. You should immediately see a response like this

{
  "name" : "Union Jack",
  "cluster_name" : "elasticsearch",
  "version" : {
    "number" : "2.2.0",
    "build_hash" : "8ff36d139e16f8720f2947ef62c8167a888992fe",
    "build_timestamp" : "2016-01-27T13:32:39Z",
    "build_snapshot" : false,
    "lucene_version" : "5.4.1"
  },
  "tagline" : "You Know, for Search"
}

If you are using curl , then you can use the below command as shown.

curl ‘http://localhost:9200/?pretty’

Now that your Elasticsearch cluster is up and running, you can start your adventure on ElasticSearch :).