# Using document \_id
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [June 29, 2018, 2:26am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885 "2018-06-29T02:26:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ybegus](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ybegus)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 2:26am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/1 "2018-06-29T02:26:01Z")
When I insert document to index Is it necessary to set valid \_id for this document? I know that this document will not be updated in an index.
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### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 3:14am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/2 "2018-06-29T03:14:31Z")
Just let Elasticsearch create a random one for you 🙂
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### Author:  [@ybegus](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ybegus)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 3:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/3 "2018-06-29T03:42:04Z")
So document \_id has valid value all the time. However when I checked document's \_id in Kibana I didn't see any values of \_id until I assign them directly
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### Author:  [@warkolm](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/warkolm)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 4:07am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/4 "2018-06-29T04:07:03Z")
I'm not sure how that can be, every document gets assigned an `_id` automatically upon indexing into Elasticsearch.
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### Author:  [@rbekker87](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rbekker87)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 5:56am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/5 "2018-06-29T05:56:19Z")
@ybegus, did you verify that the time when the document was ingested, matches up with the Time Range filter in Kibana?
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### Author:  [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 6:09am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/6 "2018-06-29T06:09:16Z")
You should be able to see the document ID in the discover application in Kibana. It is usually the second field when a document is expanded.
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### Author:  [@ybegus](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ybegus)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 8:34am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/7 "2018-06-29T08:34:02Z")
Yes I did. So I saw my documents in Discover page in Kibana but \_id fields were empty until I assigned values to \_id in meta part of bulk function. As I understood it’s not necessary for user assign any values to \_id if there is no plan to update documents, doesn’t it?
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### Author:  [@ybegus](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ybegus)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 8:36am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/8 "2018-06-29T08:36:44Z")
I agree with you. It’s easy to check. Actually I didn’t use \_id field in meta-message.
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### Author:  [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 9:04am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/9 "2018-06-29T09:04:43Z")
Every document has to have an an `_id` set. Please show a screenshot where it is empty.
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### Author:  [@ybegus](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ybegus)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/10 "2018-06-29T20:01:51Z")
I have changed my Node.js code before I wrote about that and cleaned logs because I am in debugging process. I returned code back (removed \_id from meta-data) to reproduce this behavior. However I see \_id has value all the time like in a copy of one row from Discover page (see below). So I could not reproduce this behavior.
June 29th 2018, 19:22:14.335
ts:
June 29th 2018, 19:22:14.335
opID:
close
trqID:
10
pmID:
4294967306
vpID:
2
retCode:
0
read\_bytes:
0
write\_bytes:
17,600
fd:
1,455,553
user\_name:
/developers/john
tpath:
/john-prj/vda/gendataTest/john\_1601.txt
\_id:
xMr-TGQBVw6i1FM-9AG8
\_type:
log
\_index:
icm-vda-20180629
\_score:
-
Thank you for cooperation!
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [July 27, 2018, 8:01pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/using-document-id/137885/11 "2018-07-27T20:01:51Z")
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