Change analyzer into an existing index

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

Hey there,
I have an existing index without any custom setting or mapping for any field, so everything is by default.
Into the docs I have a field named category which contains words like Women's or Womens.

POST my_index/_doc/
{
  "message": "This is the first document",
  "category": "Womens"
}


POST my_index/_doc/
{
  "message": "This is the second document",
  "category": "Women's"
}

I would like to get both type of docs with a _search operation.
So, I was trying to change index _settings with a custom char_filter to remove the single quote character:

PUT my_index/_settings
{
    "analysis": {
      "analyzer": {
        "my_analyzer": {
          "type": "custom",
          "tokenizer": "standard",
          "char_filter": [
            "my_char_filter"
          ]
        }
      },
      "char_filter": {
        "my_char_filter": {
          "type": "mapping",
          "mappings": [
            "' => "
          ]
        }
      }
  }
}

When I tried a _search I got only one type of document:

GET my_index/_search
{
  "query": {
    "match": {
      "text": {
        "category": "Womens"
      }
    }
  }
}

In another scenario, if I start from scratch creating a custom index as follow:

PUT my_index
{
  "settings": {
    "analysis": {
      "analyzer": {
        "my_analyzer": {
          "type": "custom",
          "tokenizer": "standard",
          "char_filter": [
            "my_char_filter"
          ]
        }
      },
      "char_filter": {
        "my_char_filter": {
          "type": "mapping",
          "mappings": [
            "' => "
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "text": {
        "type": "text",
        "analyzer": "my_analyzer"
      }
    }
  }
}

my search query will work.
What is wrong?

2

You cannot change analysers on existing indices like that, you will need to reindex.

3

so, probably it means that I understood the theory :slight_smile:
from your perspective, is there another posh way to get that result starting from the beginning?

4

There are search time analysers, but you are better off changing the indexing time analyser and reindexing.

5

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