Using the task management API

Elasicsearch 5.x allows the definition of actions that can take some time to complete. The most common ones are as follows:

• delete_by_query

• update_by_query

• reindex

When these actions are called, they create a server side task that executes the job. The task management API allows you to control these actions.

Getting ready

You need an up-and-running Elasticsearch installation as we described in the Downloading and installing Elasticsearch recipe in Chapter 2, Downloading and Setup.

To execute curl via the command-line, you need to install curl for your operating system.

How to do it...

For getting tasks information, we will perform the following steps:

1. To retrieve the node information, the HTTP method is GET and the curl command is as follows:

           curl -XGET 'http://localhost:9200/_tasks'curl -XGET    
           'http://localhost:9200/_tasks?nodes=<nodeId1, nodeId2>'curl - 
           XGET 'http://localhost:9200/_tasks?nodes=<nodeId1,   
           nodeId2>&...