# Only Process Newly indexed documents **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [December 14, 2017, 2:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/only-process-newly-indexed-documents/111785 "2017-12-14T14:03:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![sparklegoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@sparklegoat](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sparklegoat)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2017, 2:03pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/only-process-newly-indexed-documents/111785/1 "2017-12-14T14:03:27Z")
Is there a way to get the date and time that an elastic search document was written? Looking to run over data hourly and not have to consume data I have already processed in prior runs. The negatives to the options I have are listed in the below but I am trying to exhaust all the possibilities before making an implementation. I am running es queries via spark and would prefer NOT to look through all documents that I have already processed. Instead I would like read the only documents that were ingested between the last time the program ran and now. What is the best most efficient way to do this? I have looked at; - updating to add a field with an array with booleans for if its been looked at by which analytic. The negative is waiting for the update to occur. - index per time frame method, which would be to break down the current indexes into smaller ones so by hour.The negative I see is the number of open file descriptors. - ?? Elasticsearch version 5.6 ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2017, 2:14pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/only-process-newly-indexed-documents/111785/2 "2017-12-14T14:14:52Z")
You could set a timestamp when the document reaches Elasticsearch using [an index pipeline](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.1/accessing-data-in-pipelines.html#accessing-ingest-metadata). ---
**Author:** ![sparklegoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@sparklegoat](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sparklegoat)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2017, 2:41pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/only-process-newly-indexed-documents/111785/3 "2017-12-14T14:41:02Z")
Thank you. I am looking into this. Is there a delay from the pipeline util when I can read the document? Also for this to work I would need to walk through a time range right? Last run - now() type of logic. ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2017, 2:44pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/only-process-newly-indexed-documents/111785/4 "2017-12-14T14:44:33Z")
You can read the document directly by ID, but will have to wait until a refresh takes place before it can be searched. This would require time range logic adjusted based on your refresh interval and how long a refresh usually takes. ---
**Author:** ![sparklegoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@sparklegoat](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sparklegoat)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2017, 3:11pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/only-process-newly-indexed-documents/111785/5 "2017-12-14T15:11:20Z")
"Ingest metadata is transient and is lost after a document has been processed by the pipeline", so would I even be able to see this field? How would I know which document IDs to process with the field gone? ---
**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2017, 3:26pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/only-process-newly-indexed-documents/111785/6 "2017-12-14T15:26:39Z")
The example I linked to shows how to copy this timestamp into the document on indexing. You then have it on the document and can retrieve data based on it. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 3:26pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/only-process-newly-indexed-documents/111785/7 "2018-01-11T15:26:40Z")
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