Elastic Elasticsearch Writer Feature Type Parameters

To access feature type parameters, click the gear icon on a feature type in the workspace. This opens the Feature Type Parameter Editor.

Tip: To always display the editor in Workbench, you can select View > Windows > Parameter Editor.

General

All feature types share similar General parameters, which may include Feature Type Name, Reader or Writer information, and Geometry.

In most Writer Feature Type parameter dialogs, you can also control Dynamic Schema Definitions. Some database formats accept Table or Index Qualifier prefixes on the output table feature type.

These parameters apply only to a selected feature type, not to the entire writer.

Note: If a feature type parameter listed here conflicts with a writer-level parameter, then the writer parameter will be ignored and this feature type parameter will be used.

Table Settings: General

Table Handling

This parameter controls how the feature type handles destination tables. These options are available:

  • Create If Needed – Create destination table if it does not exist. The writer uses the information within the FME workspace to automatically create Vector Feature tables as required. All tables will be created when the first input feature is processed. If no features are sent to a feature type, then the corresponding table will not be created.
  • Use Existing – If the destination database does not exist, the translation will fail.

  • Drop and Create (version 7 and later only) – Drop destination table if it exists, then create it. The writer will drop and re-create the table before writing any features to it. Tables will be overwritten when the first input feature is processed. If no features are sent to a feature type, then the corresponding table will not be overwritten.

Mapping Creation Parameters

Note: This parameter is only relevant if the database is being created.

This parameter is a table of geometry fields to create on the type. Each row in the table represents a geometry field that has a Name and a Type, where the Type can be one of:

  • geo_point – Geometry is stored as LonLat coordinate pairs. Non-point geometry will be converted to a centroid point.
  • geo_shape – Geometry is stored using the GeoJSON specification, so most vector geometry is supported. However, some Elasticsearch spatial functions do not work on geo_shape fields.

To write to particular geometry fields on an Elasticsearch type, features should use Named Geometry. Otherwise, geometry will only be written if there is exactly one geometry field in the type.

Default:

  • Name: geometry
  • Type: geo_point

This parameter contains a list of fields to store directly within the index. If a field is included in this list, it means that the field’s value can be accessed more quickly by Elasticsearch. Note, however, that the index will take more space and may be less efficient.

Fields that are not in this list will be stored and indexed normally.

Advanced

The source of JSON documents to write to the database.

  • Feature: Documents will be created from features sent to the Elasticsearch writer (which is the usual behavior). This option enables the Document ID Attribute parameter.
  • JSON Attribute: Documents will be created using JSON directly from an attribute, if possible. This option enables the Raw JSON Attribute parameter.

Note: The Elasticsearch writer will still create a Type Mapping based on the Feature Type User Attributes. If this is undesirable, then in the User Attributes tab, set Attribute Definition to Manual and remove all attributes from the feature type.

This parameter is enabled when the Document Source is Feature. It can be used to specify an attribute to use as the Document ID. Any features that contain that attribute will use its value as the JSON Document ID.

This parameter is enabled when the Document Source is JSON Attribute. It can be used to specify an attribute to use directly as the document JSON. Any features that contain the JSON attribute will be written using the JSON attribute value. Other features will be written normally.