# Get all watches or search for watches

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-all-watches-or-search-for-watches/28056>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting\
**Created:** [August 25, 2015, 9:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-all-watches-or-search-for-watches/28056 "2015-08-25T21:54:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aochsner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/97f17d/32.png) [@aochsner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/aochsner)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2015, 9:54pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-all-watches-or-search-for-watches/28056/1 "2015-08-25T21:54:02Z")

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Is there a way to get a list of all watches? Suppose it would be nice if we could search against /\_watcher/watch as well.

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**Author:** ![skearns](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/skearns/32/125945_2.png) [@skearns](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/skearns)\
**Post date:** [August 25, 2015, 10:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-all-watches-or-search-for-watches/28056/2 "2015-08-25T22:14:47Z")

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You can search against the .watches index, which is where the watches are stored.

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**Author:** ![aochsner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/97f17d/32.png) [@aochsner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/aochsner)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2015, 1:13am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-all-watches-or-search-for-watches/28056/3 "2015-08-26T01:13:57Z")

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For some reason I thought the warnings about only using the REST API to PUT and DELETE also applied to searches, but I am mistaken. Docs don't have any such warnings around GET/Search so I'll go down that path.

Thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![aochsner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/97f17d/32.png) [@aochsner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/aochsner)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2015, 4:31pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-all-watches-or-search-for-watches/28056/4 "2015-08-26T16:31:17Z")

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It appears I'll need to issue a Refresh after creating a watch if I want it immediately available for search. Is that intentional or should it be baked into the PUT watch?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![skearns](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/skearns/32/125945_2.png) [@skearns](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/skearns)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2015, 4:47pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-all-watches-or-search-for-watches/28056/5 "2015-08-26T16:47:06Z")

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What version of Watcher are you running?

Can you post the output of:

```
curl 'http://localhost:9200/_watcher?pretty'
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![aochsner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/97f17d/32.png) [@aochsner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/aochsner)\
**Post date:** [August 26, 2015, 6:38pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-all-watches-or-search-for-watches/28056/6 "2015-08-26T18:38:16Z")

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1.0.1

{"version": {"name": "1.0.1","number": "1.0.1","build\_hash": "4dc4485f3e364c8f90da5476c150f8cda024e7ae","build\_timestamp": "2015-07-29T14:57:16Z","build\_snapshot": false}}

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 1:48pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-all-watches-or-search-for-watches/28056/7 "2017-07-06T13:48:50Z")

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