# Changing Parents
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-parents/8106
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [June 14, 2012, 3:39pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-parents/8106 "2012-06-14T15:39:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Florian\_Gilcher](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Florian_Gilcher)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2012, 3:39pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-parents/8106/1 "2012-06-14T15:39:56Z")
Hi,
I have been playing around with parent/child documents lately and the
following question came up: is it possible to change the parent of a
document?
Say, I have the following two documents:
/person/1 -d {}
/person/2 -d {}
and an asset:
/asset/3?parent=1
is it possible to change the parent to "2"?
Reindexing with parent 2 only seems to introduce a second document. (which
makes sense, as parent doubles as routing parameter)
I tried setting the \_parent field directly to 2 in multiple ways (index,
update with script), but it somehow seemed to render elasticsearch
inconsistent (e.g. parents were still querying their old childs on
has\_child).
Is this possible or supported? Or do I have to delete the old document and
index a new one with the same source, but different \_parent settings?
Best Regards,
Florian
---
### Author:  [@Patrick](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Patrick)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2012, 4:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-parents/8106/2 "2012-06-14T16:00:09Z")
I don't believe it is without creating a new document and deleting the old
one, that you can move parents. Most modification actions imply a
recreation of a document, and not an update.
## Patrick
> **[Patrick Ancillotti on about.me](https://about.me/patrick.ancillotti)**
>
> I live in New York.
patrick eefy net
On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Florian Gilcher [flo@andersground.net](mailto:flo@andersground.net)wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been playing around with parent/child documents lately and the
> following question came up: is it possible to change the parent of a
> document?
>
> Say, I have the following two documents:
>
> /person/1 -d {}
> /person/2 -d {}
>
> and an asset:
>
> /asset/3?parent=1
>
> is it possible to change the parent to "2"?
>
> Reindexing with parent 2 only seems to introduce a second document. (which
> makes sense, as parent doubles as routing parameter)
>
> I tried setting the \_parent field directly to 2 in multiple ways (index,
> update with script), but it somehow seemed to render elasticsearch
> inconsistent (e.g. parents were still querying their old childs on
> has\_child).
>
> Is this possible or supported? Or do I have to delete the old document and
> index a new one with the same source, but different \_parent settings?
>
> Best Regards,
> Florian
---
### Author:  [@Pierre\_Durand](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Pierre_Durand)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2012, 4:56pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-parents/8106/3 "2012-06-14T16:56:16Z")
imo, it's not possible, because a child document is stores on the same
shard as its parent
On Thursday, June 14, 2012 6:00:09 PM UTC+2, Patrick Ancillotti wrote:
> I don't believe it is without creating a new document and deleting the old
> one, that you can move parents. Most modification actions imply a
> recreation of a document, and not an update.
>
> ## Patrick
>
> [Patrick Ancillotti - New York | about.me](http://about.me/patrick.ancillotti)
> patrick eefy net
>
> On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Florian Gilcher [flo@andersground.net](mailto:flo@andersground.net)wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have been playing around with parent/child documents lately and the
> > following question came up: is it possible to change the parent of a
> > document?
> >
> > Say, I have the following two documents:
> >
> > /person/1 -d {}
> > /person/2 -d {}
> >
> > and an asset:
> >
> > /asset/3?parent=1
> >
> > is it possible to change the parent to "2"?
> >
> > Reindexing with parent 2 only seems to introduce a second document.
> > (which makes sense, as parent doubles as routing parameter)
> >
> > I tried setting the \_parent field directly to 2 in multiple ways (index,
> > update with script), but it somehow seemed to render elasticsearch
> > inconsistent (e.g. parents were still querying their old childs on
> > has\_child).
> >
> > Is this possible or supported? Or do I have to delete the old document
> > and index a new one with the same source, but different \_parent settings?
> >
> > Best Regards,
> > Florian
---
### Author:  [@Florian\_Gilcher](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Florian_Gilcher)
#### Post date: [June 23, 2012, 12:35pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-parents/8106/4 "2012-06-23T12:35:59Z")
Hi Pierre and Patrick,
thanks for the answers. So my suspicion was right. I was aware that this
would be a special operation, as the child would have to be moved to the
new shard.
I have an additional question for my future mental model: can I safely
assume that documents never "travel" shards and have to be moved by hand?
Regards,
Florian
---
### Author:  [@kimchy](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kimchy)
#### Post date: [June 25, 2012, 12:31pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-parents/8106/5 "2012-06-25T12:31:32Z")
Yes, you can assume that.
On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Florian Gilcher [flo@andersground.net](mailto:flo@andersground.net)wrote:
> Hi Pierre and Patrick,
>
> thanks for the answers. So my suspicion was right. I was aware that this
> would be a special operation, as the child would have to be moved to the
> new shard.
>
> I have an additional question for my future mental model: can I safely
> assume that documents never "travel" shards and have to be moved by hand?
>
> Regards,
> Florian
---
### Author:  [@Mark\_Hoffman](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Mark_Hoffman)
#### Post date: [July 18, 2014, 5:40pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-parents/8106/6 "2014-07-18T17:40:52Z")
We have also experienced this issue where we are now using parent/child
documents. We are using 0.90.5 version.
Our application requires that we re-assign a child to a new parent from
time to time and we discovered that without first deleting the child with
the old parent, two documents with the same \_id but different parents can
be in the index because the parents are on different shards. Does anyone
know if it is possible to reassign a child to a new parent without first
deleting might something available in newer versions? It seems reasonable
that a document can be updated by it's canonical document id (\_id), without
having to aware of the subtleties of sharding?
On Thursday, June 14, 2012 11:39:56 AM UTC-4, Florian Gilcher wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been playing around with parent/child documents lately and the
> following question came up: is it possible to change the parent of a
> document?
>
> Say, I have the following two documents:
>
> /person/1 -d {}
> /person/2 -d {}
>
> and an asset:
>
> /asset/3?parent=1
>
> is it possible to change the parent to "2"?
>
> Reindexing with parent 2 only seems to introduce a second document. (which
> makes sense, as parent doubles as routing parameter)
>
> I tried setting the \_parent field directly to 2 in multiple ways (index,
> update with script), but it somehow seemed to render elasticsearch
> inconsistent (e.g. parents were still querying their old childs on
> has\_child).
>
> Is this possible or supported? Or do I have to delete the old document and
> index a new one with the same source, but different \_parent settings?
>
> Best Regards,
> Florian
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com).
To view this discussion on the web visit [https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/7546af8c-cf8c-4960-97b1-876fdf264702%40googlegroups.com](https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/7546af8c-cf8c-4960-97b1-876fdf264702%40googlegroups.com).
For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/d/optout](https://groups.google.com/d/optout).
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2017, 1:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/changing-parents/8106/7 "2017-07-06T01:14:50Z")