Elasticsearch Parse Exception error when attempting to index PDF

Question

I'm just getting started with elasticsearch. Our requirement has us needing to index thousands of PDF files and I'm having a hard time getting just ONE of them to index successfully. Installed the Attachment Type plugin and got response: `Installed mapper-attachments`. Followed the Attachment Type in Action tutorial but the process hangs and I don't know how to interpret the error message. Also tried the gist which hangs in the same place. ``` $ curl -X POST "localhost:9200/test/attachment/" -d json.file {"error":"ElasticSearchParseException[Failed to derive xcontent from (offset=0, length=9): [106, 115, 111, 110, 46, 102, 105, 108, 101]]","status":400} ``` More details: The `json.file` contains an embedded Base64 PDF file (as per instructions). The first line of the file appears correct (to me anyway): `{"file":"JVBERi0xLjQNJeLjz9MNCjE1OCAwIG9iaiA8`... I'm not sure if maybe the `json.file` is invalid or if maybe elasticsearch just isn't set up to parse PDFs properly?!? Encoding - Her…

Accepted Answer

The following error points to the source of the problem.

```
Failed to derive xcontent from (offset=0, length=9): [106, 115, 111, 110, 46, 102, 105, 108, 101]
```

The UTF-8 codes [106, 115, 111, ...] show that you are trying to index string "json.file" instead of content of the file.

To index content of the file simply add letter "@" in front of the file name.

```
curl -X POST "localhost:9200/test/attachment/" -d @json.file
```

Elasticsearch Parse Exception error when attempting to index PDF

Solution

Problem