Parent with a nested child advice

[tiggyboo (Al Spohn)]

I'm looking to load denormalized table data in ES, but am finding myself somewhat overwhelmed with the alternatives. Here I am attempting to created a nested child of a parent - however, I get the

"Can't specify parent if no parent field has been configured"

error when I try to add the nested child. Here's what it looks like - I'm sure the rub is somewhere in how I'm indexing the nested piece. Any help appreciated!

PUT my_index
{
"mappings": {
"my_parent": {},
"my_child": {
"_parent": {
"type": "my_parent"
}
},
"my_nested":{
"properties": {
"support": {
"type": "nested"
}
}
}
}
}

PUT my_index/my_parent/1
{
"text": "This is a parent document"
}

PUT my_index/my_child/2?parent=1
{
"text": "This is a child document"
}

PUT my_index/my_nested/4?parent=1
{
"support" : [
{
"support.support_ai":"333",
"support.support_sort":"5",
"support.suppot_desc":"Clinical Assistant",
"support.support_note":"x",
"support.support_phone":"(77)X-XXXX",
"support.support_start_date":"Nov 24",
"support.support_end_date":"Dec 31 2599 12:00:00:000AM"
},
{
"support.support_ai":"394",
"support.support_sort":"1",
"support.support_desc":"Medical Secretary",
"support.support_note":"y",
"support.support_phone":"(77)Y-YYYY",
"support.support_start_date":"Jan 1 1900",
"support.support_end_date":"Dec 31 2599 12:00:00:000AM"
}
]
}

[warkolm (Mark Walkom)]

You cannot mix parent/child and nested together like this.

[tiggyboo (Al Spohn)]

I was afraid that might be the case. What would you recommend for mapping something like:

person ("parent")
-> work location (one or more)
--> phone (one or more)
--> administrative support phone (tied to work location - one or more)

My previous mapping that I had for Mongodb worked (conventional arrays,) but in Elasticsearch it wouldn't allow me to distinguish between children. Thanks in advance for any advice.

[warkolm (Mark Walkom)]

Just use multi-level children.

Parent is the person.
Child is location and phone.
Grand child is the last phone.