# Mapper attachment plugin vs. pre-parsing and extracting content from binary files
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [February 2, 2017, 10:13pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764 "2017-02-02T22:13:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@tlovett1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tlovett1)
#### Post date: [February 2, 2017, 10:13pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/1 "2017-02-02T22:13:38Z")
In order to search binary files, I have two options that I see:
1. Use the Elastic Mapping Plugin and have Elasticsearch handle all the things.
2. Pre-parse and extract content from binary file. Send parsed content to Elasticsearch.
Number 2 seems like a perfectly viable solution. What's the advantage of using the mapper plugin?
---
### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 7:47am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/2 "2017-02-03T07:47:46Z")
Mapper plugin is removed in 6.0. Ingest attachment should be used instead.
But TBH I prefer your solution number 2. It's what I do in [FSCrawler](https://github.com/dadoonet/fscrawler) project.
---
### Author:  [@David\_Pocivalnik](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/David_Pocivalnik)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 12:02pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/3 "2017-02-03T12:02:33Z")
Can you elaborate on why you would choose to parse the documents yourself and not let the ingest-attachment plug-in do the work?
---
### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 12:24pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/4 "2017-02-03T12:24:00Z")
Mainly because of some jar conflicts (jarhell checks) we had to reduce the surface of what actually Tika can extract (supported files).
So if you prefer having a full support of all supported files by Tika, doing that externally will help.
Also, some advanced features like using Tesseract OCR are not be possible with ingest-attachment plugin.
---
### Author:  [@tlovett1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tlovett1)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 3:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/5 "2017-02-03T15:17:05Z")
Awesome thanks. Would love to hear from someone from Elastic on this.
---
### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/6 "2017-02-03T15:29:16Z")
> [@tlovett1](#):
>
> Would love to hear from someone from Elastic on this.
lol
[http://david.pilato.fr/blog/2017/01/09/4-years-at-elastic/](http://david.pilato.fr/blog/2017/01/09/4-years-at-elastic/)
---
### Author:  [@tlovett1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tlovett1)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 3:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/7 "2017-02-03T15:50:47Z")
Sorry about that! Did not read your profile.
---
### Author:  [@tlovett1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tlovett1)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 3:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/8 "2017-02-03T15:51:43Z")
David, are there any advantages to the first approach?
---
### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 4:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/9 "2017-02-03T16:01:57Z")
No worries! Was funny to read 🙂
---
### Author:  [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 4:02pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/10 "2017-02-03T16:02:53Z")
The main advantage is that you don't write/maintain the code.
If you are using ingest-attachment instead of mapper-attachments (removed in 6.0), another advantage is that you can dedicate some nodes as ingest nodes and then share the load on multiple nodes.
---
### Author:  [@tlovett1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/tlovett1)
#### Post date: [February 3, 2017, 4:04pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/11 "2017-02-03T16:04:06Z")
Awesome. Totally makes sense. Thanks.
---
### Author:  [@David\_Pocivalnik](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/David_Pocivalnik)
#### Post date: [February 6, 2017, 8:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/12 "2017-02-06T08:14:42Z")
thanks for your input!
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2017, 8:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/mapper-attachment-plugin-vs-pre-parsing-and-extracting-content-from-binary-files/73764/13 "2017-03-06T08:14:55Z")
This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.