# Routing **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [October 1, 2012, 8:09pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/routing/9203 "2012-10-01T20:09:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Douglas\_Ferguson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/douglas_ferguson/32/2121_2.png) [@Douglas\_Ferguson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Douglas_Ferguson)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 8:09pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/routing/9203/1 "2012-10-01T20:09:10Z")
I'm curious about using routing. Let's assuming I use my user\_id for routing. If I understand it correctly, then all documents for that user id will be in it's own shard. I'm not sure how this co-exists with the need to specific the # of shards when creating an index. Does routing automatically increase the # of shards when it sees a new routing id or does it map routes into the existing set of shards. -- ---
**Author:** ![Rafal\_Kuc\_3](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/rafal_kuc_3/32/799_2.png) [@Rafal\_Kuc\_3](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Rafal_Kuc_3)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 8:12pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/routing/9203/2 "2012-10-01T20:12:00Z")
Hello! Routing doesn't increase the amount of shards and will route you documents to available shards. That means that you can have documents with different user\_id in a single shard, so in addition to routing you should also add filtering for the same user\_id if you wan to get documents for a particular user only. _--_ Regards, Rafał Kuć Sematext :: [http://sematext.com/](http://sematext.com/) _:: Solr - Lucene - Nutch - ElasticSearch_ I'm curious about using routing. Let's assuming I use my user\_id for routing. If I understand it correctly, then all documents for that user id will be in it's own shard. I'm not sure how this co-exists with the need to specific the # of shards when creating an index. Does routing automatically increase the # of shards when it sees a new routing id or does it map routes into the existing set of shards. -- ---
**Author:** ![Douglas\_Ferguson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/douglas_ferguson/32/2121_2.png) [@Douglas\_Ferguson](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Douglas_Ferguson)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2012, 11:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/routing/9203/3 "2012-10-01T23:00:13Z")
So routing is just a way to ensure that the data is always stored in the same shard? But that shard could contain other users as well? On Monday, October 1, 2012 3:09:10 PM UTC-5, Douglas Ferguson wrote: > I'm curious about using routing. > > Let's assuming I use my user\_id for routing. If I understand it correctly, > then all documents for that user id > will be in it's own shard. > > I'm not sure how this co-exists with the need to specific the # of shards > when creating an index. > Does routing automatically increase the # of shards when it sees a new > routing id or does it map > routes into the existing set of shards. -- ---
**Author:** ![otisg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/otisg/32/492_2.png) [@otisg](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/otisg)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2012, 1:21am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/routing/9203/4 "2012-10-02T01:21:31Z")
Hi, Yes, sharding means consistent indexing of documents with certain field value(s) to a particular shard and, yes, this does not mean that that multiple different field values cannot map and be routed to the same shard. ## Otis Search Analytics - [Cloud Monitoring Tools & Services | Sematext](http://sematext.com/search-analytics/index.html) Performance Monitoring - [Sematext Monitoring | Infrastructure Monitoring Service](http://sematext.com/spm/index.html) On Monday, October 1, 2012 7:00:13 PM UTC-4, Douglas Ferguson wrote: > So routing is just a way to ensure that the data is always stored in the > same shard? > > But that shard could contain other users as well? > > On Monday, October 1, 2012 3:09:10 PM UTC-5, Douglas Ferguson wrote: > > > I'm curious about using routing. > > > > Let's assuming I use my user\_id for routing. If I understand it > > correctly, then all documents for that user id > > will be in it's own shard. > > > > I'm not sure how this co-exists with the need to specific the # of shards > > when creating an index. > > Does routing automatically increase the # of shards when it sees a new > > routing id or does it map > > routes into the existing set of shards. -- ---
**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, 3:10am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/routing/9203/5 "2017-07-06T03:10:33Z")