# Get attribute type

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-attribute-type/3953>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [February 21, 2011, 1:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-attribute-type/3953 "2011-02-21T13:19:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ridvan\_Gyundogan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e495f1/32.png) [@Ridvan\_Gyundogan](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Ridvan_Gyundogan)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2011, 1:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-attribute-type/3953/1 "2011-02-21T13:19:08Z")

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Hi, in the docs I see that I can change the type of a field with the  
followng:

$ curl -XPUT [http://localhost:9200/twitter/user/\_mapping](http://localhost:9200/twitter/user/_mapping) -d '{  
"properties" : {  
"name" : { "type" : "string" }  
}  
}'

but how to get the current type of a field "name"?

---

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**Author:** ![Clinton\_Gormley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@Clinton\_Gormley](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Clinton_Gormley)\
**Post date:** [February 21, 2011, 1:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-attribute-type/3953/2 "2011-02-21T13:44:10Z")

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Hi Ridvan

> Hi, in the docs I see that I can change the type of a field with the  
> followng:

Beware - you can't change the existing type. You can add new types.

> but how to get the current type of a field "name"?

You can get the current mapping using GET mapping:

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>
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clint

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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, 4:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/get-attribute-type/3953/3 "2017-07-06T04:11:46Z")

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