Ignore malformed
The ignore_malformed mapping parameter instructs the indexing engine to ignore values that do not match the field’s expected format. When enabled, malformed values are not indexed, preventing entire-document rejection because of data format issues. This ensures that documents are still stored even if one or more fields contain data that cannot be parsed.
By default, ignore_malformed is disabled, which means that if a value cannot be parsed according to the field type, indexing will fail for the entire document.
Example: ignore_malformed off
Create an index named people_no_ignore containing an age field of type integer. By default, ignore_malformed is set to false:
PUT /people_no_ignore
{
"mappings": {
"properties": {
"age": {
"type": "integer"
}
}
}
}
Index a document with a malformed value:
PUT /people_no_ignore/_doc/1
{
"age": "twenty"
}
The request fails because of the malformed value:
{
"error": {
"root_cause": [
{
"type": "mapper_parsing_exception",
"reason": "failed to parse field [age] of type [integer] in document with id '1'. Preview of field's value: 'twenty'"
}
],
"type": "mapper_parsing_exception",
"reason": "failed to parse field [age] of type [integer] in document with id '1'. Preview of field's value: 'twenty'",
"caused_by": {
"type": "number_format_exception",
"reason": "For input string: \"twenty\""
}
},
"status": 400
}
Example: ignore_malformed on
Create an index named people_ignore in which the age field has ignore_malformed set to true:
PUT /people_ignore
{
"mappings": {
"properties": {
"age": {
"type": "integer",
"ignore_malformed": true
}
}
}
}
Index a document with a malformed value:
PUT /people_ignore/_doc/1
{
"age": "twenty"
}
Retrieve the document:
GET /people_ignore/_doc/1
The response shows that the document was indexed successfully, despite having a malformed value:
{
"_index": "people_ignore",
"_id": "1",
"_version": 1,
"_seq_no": 0,
"_primary_term": 1,
"found": true,
"_source": {
"age": "twenty"
}
}