# Automatically add current timestamp when indexing
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/automatically-add-current-timestamp-when-indexing/185110
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [June 11, 2019, 7:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/automatically-add-current-timestamp-when-indexing/185110 "2019-06-11T07:27:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@i333](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/i333)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2019, 7:27am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/automatically-add-current-timestamp-when-indexing/185110/1 "2019-06-11T07:27:51Z")
Can I have elasticsearch include the current timestamp when indexing a document, or is it necessary to add this from the application code that does the indexing? Any kind of default value feature where I could make it set the field to the current timestamp if no value is provided?
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### Author:  [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2019, 7:36am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/automatically-add-current-timestamp-when-indexing/185110/2 "2019-06-11T07:36:22Z")
You can do that using an ingest pipeline.
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### Author:  [@i333](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/i333)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2019, 11:32am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/automatically-add-current-timestamp-when-indexing/185110/3 "2019-06-11T11:32:48Z")
Ive only used ingest pipelines when reindexing. How can I use them in this way?
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### Author:  [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2019, 2:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/automatically-add-current-timestamp-when-indexing/185110/4 "2019-06-11T14:00:12Z")
I believe there is a link to a similar example towards the end of [this blog post](https://www.elastic.co/blog/should-i-use-logstash-or-elasticsearch-ingest-nodes) where a current timestamp is added to calculate the ingest delay.
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2019, 2:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/automatically-add-current-timestamp-when-indexing/185110/5 "2019-07-09T14:07:09Z")
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