mapper_parsing_exception for a custom analyzer while creating index in elasticsearch?

Question

I create an index named test via a PUT request using:

PUT http://localhost:9250/test
{
    "settings": {
        "analysis": {
            "char_filter": {
                "&_to_and": {
                    "type": "mapping",
                    "mappings": ["& => and"]
                }
            },
            "filter": {
                "my_stopwords": {
                    "type":       "stop",
                    "stopwords": ["the", "a"]
                }
            },
            "analyzer": {
                "my_analyzer": {
                    "type":         "custom",
                    "char_filter":  ["html_strip", "&_to_and"],
                    "tokenizer":    "standard",
                    "filter":       ["lowercase", "my_stopwords"]
                },
                "folding": {
                    "token_filters": ["lowercase", "asciifolding"],
                    "tokenizer": "standard",
                    "type": "custom"
                }
            }
        }
    },
    "mappings": {
        "tweet": {
            "dynamic": "strict",
            "properties": {
                "author": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "index": "my_analyzer",
                    "store": true
                },
                "text": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "index": "folding",
                    "store": true
                },
                "timestamp": {
                    "type": "date",
                    "format": "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ",
                    "store": true
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

But this returns the following error:

{
  "error": {
    "root_cause": [
      {
        "type": "mapper_parsing_exception",
        "reason": "wrong value for index [my_analyzer] for field [author]"
      }
    ],
    "type": "mapper_parsing_exception",
    "reason": "Failed to parse mapping [tweet]: wrong value for index [my_analyzer] for field [author]",
    "caused_by": {
      "type": "mapper_parsing_exception",
      "reason": "wrong value for index [my_analyzer] for field [author]"
    }
  },
  "status": 400
}

The json that I am sending seems to be valid. What is the reason of this error?

I am using ES 2.2.0.

Answer 1

As the error message describes custom-analyzer's such as my_analyzer are not valid values for indexoption in mapping. The only values it can take as per documentation are

no

Do not add this field value to the index. With this setting, the field will not be queryable.

not_analyzed

Add the field value to the index unchanged, as a single term. This is the default for all fields that support this option except for string fields. not_analyzed fields are usually used with term-level queries for structured search.

analyzed

This option applies only to string fields, for which it is the default. The string field value is first analyzed to convert the string into terms (e.g. a list of individual words), which are then indexed. At search time, the query string is passed through (usually) the same analyzer to generate terms in the same format as those in the index. It is this process that enables full text search.

If you wanted to set a custom-analyzer for a field use the analyzer option

Example:

{
    "settings": {
        "analysis": {
            "char_filter": {
                "&_to_and": {
                    "type": "mapping",
                    "mappings": ["& => and"]
                }
            },
            "filter": {
                "my_stopwords": {
                    "type":       "stop",
                    "stopwords": ["the", "a"]
                }
            },
            "analyzer": {
                "my_analyzer": {
                    "type":         "custom",
                    "char_filter":  ["html_strip", "&_to_and"],
                    "tokenizer":    "standard",
                    "filter":       ["lowercase", "my_stopwords"]
                },
                "folding": {
                    "token_filters": ["lowercase", "asciifolding"],
                    "tokenizer": "standard",
                    "type": "custom"
                }
            }
        }
    },
    "mappings": {
        "tweet": {
            "dynamic": "strict",
            "properties": {
                "author": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "analyzer": "my_analyzer",
                    "store": true
                },
                "text": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "analyzer": "folding",
                    "store": true
                },
                "timestamp": {
                    "type": "date",
                    "format": "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ",
                    "store": true
                }
            }
        }
    }
}