# Associate document with a pre-existing child

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/associate-document-with-a-pre-existing-child/5835>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [November 10, 2011, 2:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/associate-document-with-a-pre-existing-child/5835 "2011-11-10T14:14:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Felix\_S](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/felix_s/32/2933_2.png) [@Felix\_S](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Felix_S)\
**Post date:** [November 10, 2011, 2:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/associate-document-with-a-pre-existing-child/5835/1 "2011-11-10T14:14:57Z")

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Hi!

Is it possible to specify an already existing object as a nested  
(child) object of a newly indexed one? I have a small number of  
persons that are associated with a big number of things. I'm doing  
most of the searching on things, so I need to be able to fetch those;  
if I nest things in persons, then I wouldn't be able to do that.  
However, in some cases I need to search for things via the persons  
they belong to, and I'd like to avoid indexing the same person  
thousands of times (because then editing the person becomes a  
consistency nightmare). Using IDs is out, too, because I may have to  
search for persons by name and date of birth. Is it possible to tell  
ElasticSearch to use a pre-existing person object as the nested child  
of a thing object that i'm adding to the index?

Thanks!  
Felix

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:49am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/associate-document-with-a-pre-existing-child/5835/2 "2017-07-06T03:49:09Z")

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Closed on July 6, 2017, 3:49am UTC