Validation Failed: 1: no requests added in bulk indexing

Question

I have a JSON file and I need to index it on ElasticSearch server.

JSON file looks like this:

{
    "sku": "1",
    "vbid": "1",
    "created": "Sun, 05 Oct 2014 03:35:58 +0000",
    "updated": "Sun, 06 Mar 2016 12:44:48 +0000",
    "type": "Single",
    "downloadable-duration": "perpetual",
    "online-duration": "365 days",
    "book-format": "ePub",
    "build-status": "In Inventory",
    "description": "On 7 August 1914, a week before the Battle of Tannenburg and two weeks before the Battle of the Marne, the French army attacked the Germans at Mulhouse in Alsace. Their objective was to recapture territory which had been lost after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, which made it a matter of pride for the French. However, after initial success in capturing Mulhouse, the Germans were able to reinforce more quickly, and drove them back within three days. After forty-three years of peace, this was the first test of strength between France and Germany. In 1929 Karl Deuringer wrote the official history of the battle for the Bavarian Army, an immensely detailed work of 890 pages; First World War expert and former army officer Terence Zuber has translated this study and edited it down to more accessible length, to produce the first account in English of the first major battle of the First World War.",
    "publication-date": "07/2014",
    "author": "Deuringer, Karl",
    "title": "The First Battle of the First World War: Alsace-Lorraine",
    "sort-title": "First Battle of the First World War: Alsace-Lorraine",
    "edition": "0",
    "sampleable": "false",
    "page-count": "0",
    "print-drm-text": "This title will only allow printing of 2 consecutive pages at a time.",
    "copy-drm-text": "This title will only allow copying of 2 consecutive pages at a time.",
    "kind": "book",
    "fro": "false",
    "distributable": "true",
    "subjects": {
      "subject": [
        {
          "-schema": "bisac",
          "-code": "HIS027090",
          "#text": "World War I"
        },
        {
          "-schema": "coursesmart",
          "-code": "cs.soc_sci.hist.milit_hist",
          "#text": "Social Sciences -> History -> Military History"
        }
      ]
    },   
   "pricelist": {
      "publisher-list-price": "0.0",
      "digital-list-price": "7.28"
    },
    "publisher": {
      "publisher-name": "The History Press",
      "imprint-name": "The History Press Ireland"
    },
    "aliases": {
      "eisbn-canonical": "1",
      "isbn-canonical": "1",
      "print-isbn-canonical": "9780752460864",
      "isbn13": "1",
      "isbn10": "0750951796",
      "additional-isbns": {
        "isbn": [
          {
            "-type": "print-isbn-10",
            "#text": "0752460862"
          },
          {
            "-type": "print-isbn-13",
            "#text": "97807524608"
          }
        ]
      }
    },
    "owner": {
      "company": {
        "id": "1893",
        "name": "The History Press"
      }
    },
    "distributor": {
      "company": {
        "id": "3658",
        "name": "asc"
      }
    }
  }

But when I try to index this JSON file using command

curl -XPOST 'http://localhost:9200/_bulk' -d @1.json

I get this error:

{"error":{"root_cause":[{"type":"action_request_validation_exception","reason":"Validation Failed: 1: no requests added;"}],"type":"action_request_validation_exception","reason":"Validation Failed: 1: no requests added;"},"status":400}

I don't know where I am making a mistake.

Answer 1

My issue was also the missing \n. If you print it, it will parse it & interpret it as a newline (so it looks like you're missing a \n). In case that helps anyone

pseudocode:

document = '{"index": {"_index": "users", "_id": "1"}} \n {"first_name": "Bob"}'
print(document)

will print

{"index": {"_index": "users", "_id": "1"}}
{"first_name": "Bob"}

but that's ok -- as long as the string contains the \n separator then it should work

Answer 2

Adding next line(Enter in case of postman or "\n" if you are using json as body in client API) did my work

Answer 3

Was a weird mistake in my case. I was creating the bulkRequest Object and clearing it before inserting into ElasticSearch.

The line that was creating the issue.

bulkRequest.requests().clear();

Answer 4

I had a similar issue in that I wanted to delete a specific document of a specific type and via the above answer I managed to get my simple bash script working finally!

I have a file that has a document_id per line (document_id.txt) and using the below bash script I can delete documents of a certain type with the mentioned document_id's.

This is what the file looks like:

c476ce18803d7ed3708f6340fdfa34525b20ee90
5131a30a6316f221fe420d2d3c0017a76643bccd
08ebca52025ad1c81581a018febbe57b1e3ca3cd
496ff829c736aa311e2e749cec0df49b5a37f796
87c4101cb10d3404028f83af1ce470a58744b75c
37f0daf7be27cf081e491dd445558719e4dedba1

The bash script looks like this:

#!/bin/bash

es_cluster="http://localhost:9200"
index="some-index"
doc_type="some-document-type"

for doc_id in `cat document_id.txt`
do
    request_string="{\"delete\" : { \"_type\" : \"${doc_type}\", \"_id\" : \"${doc_id}\" } }"
    echo -e "${request_string}\r\n\r\n" | curl -s -XPOST "${es_cluster}/${index}/${doc_type}/_bulk" --data-binary @-
    echo
done

The trick, after lots of frustration, was to use the -e option to echo and append \n\n to the output of echo before I piped it into curl.

And then in curl I then have the --data-binary option set to stop it stripping out the \n\n needed for the _bulk endpoint followed by the @- option to get it to read from stdin!

Answer 5

The bulk API of Elasticsearch use a special syntax, which is actually made of json documents written on single lines. Take a look to the documentation.

The syntax is pretty simple. For indexing, creating and updating you need 2 single line json documents. The first lines tells the action, the second gives the document to index/create/update. To delete a document, it is only needed the action line. For example (from the documentation):

{ "index" : { "_index" : "test", "_type" : "type1", "_id" : "1" } }
{ "field1" : "value1" }
{ "create" : { "_index" : "test", "_type" : "type1", "_id" : "3" } }
{ "field1" : "value3" }
{ "update" : {"_id" : "1", "_type" : "type1", "_index" : "index1"} }   
{ "doc" : {"field2" : "value2"} }
{ "delete" : { "_index" : "test", "_type" : "type1", "_id" : "2" } }

Don't forget to end your file with a new line. Then, to call the bulk api use the command:

curl -s -XPOST localhost:9200/_bulk --data-binary "@requests"

From the documentation:

If you’re providing text file input to curl, you must use the --data-binary flag instead of plain -d