# Filebeat and updating documents **URL:** \ **Category:** Beats\ **Tags:** filebeat\ **Created:** [February 6, 2019, 8:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-and-updating-documents/167355 "2019-02-06T20:54:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Garry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@Garry](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Garry)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 8:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-and-updating-documents/167355/1 "2019-02-06T20:54:15Z")
I am using Filebeat to bring database information into Elasticsearch. In some instances the existing table data (that has already been imported into Elasticsearch) is updated. How can I use Filebeat to update this data within Elasticsearch? ---
**Author:** ![pierhugues](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/pierhugues/32/48383_2.png) [@pierhugues](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/pierhugues)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2019, 1:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-and-updating-documents/167355/2 "2019-02-07T13:34:11Z")
Hello, @garry we call this deduplication, what you need to do is to have a unique id in the log and use that id as the document id in Elasticsearch. If you don't have an id, you can rely to fingerprinter to generate a unique hash for you and use that as the ID of the document. But in the later case you will need to use something like this [https://www.elastic.co/blog/logstash-lessons-handling-duplicates](https://www.elastic.co/blog/logstash-lessons-handling-duplicates) ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2019, 1:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-and-updating-documents/167355/3 "2019-03-07T13:34:17Z")
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