# existsAlias returns false
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/existsalias-returns-false/322455
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Tags:** language-clients
**Created:** [January 4, 2023, 11:37am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/existsalias-returns-false/322455 "2023-01-04T11:37:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ewolfman](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ewolfman)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2023, 11:37am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/existsalias-returns-false/322455/1 "2023-01-04T11:37:26Z")
Hi,
Using RestHighLevelClient with Elasticsearch 7.17.7 both client and server.
For new records coming in I check wether an expected alias exists.
```auto
boolean exists = client.indices().existsAlias(requestWithAlias, RequestOptions.DEFAULT);
```
At times I can see this API return false for an alias that was **created long ago**. This can even happen with 2 almost consecutive calls with just a second or so in between.
An example from my own logs (truncated logs):
> 7:30:59.141 AM alias exists
> 7:31:01.279 AM alias does not exist
According to the [documentation](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/client/java-rest/current/java-rest-high-exists-alias.html#java-rest-high-exists-alias-sync):
> In cases where the server returns a `4xx` or `5xx` error code, the high-level client tries to parse the response body error details instead and then throws a generic `ElasticsearchException` and adds the original `ResponseException` as a suppressed exception to it.
But because there was no exception, I assume that some code other than 200 was returned (looking into the Java code, 200 will return true otherwise false - so I guess a 404 was returned but I don't know for sure).
I was thinking perhaps there was a timeout, but shouldn't this have resulted in an exception?
I can also see some logs from ES mentioning memory from time to time (not necessarily adjacent to the example above):
> attempting to trigger G1GC due to high heap usage
followed by:
> GC did bring memory usage down
Any idea why existsAlias sometimes returns false for an alias that exists for sure?
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 1, 2023, 11:37am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/existsalias-returns-false/322455/2 "2023-02-01T11:37:34Z")
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