Adding a field to the default mapping

[pkaeding (Patrick Kaeding)]

I am having trouble adding a field (named user.privateAttributes) to an existing _default_ mapping. Instead of adding the new field, it is replacing the entire mapping with a new single-field mapping.

When I run the same call on a regular mapping (for a type, not _default_), the field is added as I expect, with other fields remaining untouched.

I'm running ES 2.4.1.

My request to add the field is like this:

curl -s -XPUT http://localhost:9200/users/_mapping/_default_ -d'
  {
      "properties": {
          "user": {
              "properties": {
                  "privateAttributes": {
                      "type": "string",
                      "fields": {
                          "untouched": {
                              "type": "string",
                              "index": "not_analyzed"
                          }
                      }
                  }
              }
          }
      }
  }'

How can I modify the default mapping to add a new field, leaving the existing fields unchanged?

[pkaeding (Patrick Kaeding)]

Ahh, I see that in later versions of the documentation, this note is added:

When updating the default mapping with the PUT mapping API, the new mapping is not merged with the existing mapping. Instead, the new default mapping replaces the existing one.

I guess this limitation was in 2.4 as well, but just not called out in the docs.