RestHighLevelClient - Unable to parse response body

Elastic Stack Elasticsearch
1

I'm new to ES and wiring up my first sample in a Java Spring Boot app. I'm using the pure
RestHighLevelClient approach but seem to keep getting a Unable to parse response body message when I call the client.

I'm a bit stuck on how to populate SearchResponse, any thoughts on how to troubleshoot?

// Config class

   @Bean
    public RestHighLevelClient client() {
        return new RestHighLevelClient(RestClient.builder(new HttpHost(hostUrl, port, scheme)));
    }
	
// Proxy class

    public List<ResidentModel> getInitialSample() {

        SearchSourceBuilder searchSourceBuilder = new SearchSourceBuilder();
        searchSourceBuilder.query(QueryBuilders.termQuery("first_name", "john"));
        searchSourceBuilder.from(0);
        searchSourceBuilder.size(5);
        SearchRequest searchRequest = new SearchRequest(new String[] {"myresidents"}, searchSourceBuilder);

        SearchResponse searchResponse = null;
        try{
            searchResponse = client.search(searchRequest, RequestOptions.DEFAULT);
        }catch (ElasticsearchException ex){
            DebugFailedQuery(ex);
        }
        if(searchResponse!=null){
            SearchHits hits = searchResponse.getHits();
        }
        return null;        // still need to deserialize the response.
    }
2

I figured it out. Elastic was installed on a Kubernetes cluster I was trying to hit elasticsearch.mycompany.com:80 and the NginX ingress controller was not configured with SSL but had the following flag set trying to redirect access.

nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/force-ssl-redirect: "true"

So if you get a "Unable to parse response body" message (mine was from the request not the response) and if you spot a " 308 Permanent Redirect" in the stack trace, the issues could be on the server hosting elastic.