# What are useful API requests for administration?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-useful-api-requests-for-administration/109973>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [December 1, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-useful-api-requests-for-administration/109973 "2017-12-01T18:48:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![learner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b782af/32.png) [@learner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/learner)\
**Post date:** [December 1, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-useful-api-requests-for-administration/109973/1 "2017-12-01T18:48:33Z")

</div>

For administration and troubleshooting, these basic ones seem quite useful.

GET /\_cat

GET /\_cat/indices

GET /\_search

Any advice on other API queries for sysadmins/devops?

Thank you in advance!

- Young

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![luiz.santos](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/luiz.santos/32/24664_2.png) [@luiz.santos](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/luiz.santos)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2017, 12:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-useful-api-requests-for-administration/109973/2 "2017-12-08T12:34:14Z")

</div>

Hi learner,

All you need is listed is GET /\_cat:

```
/_cat/allocation
/_cat/shards
/_cat/shards/{index}
/_cat/master
/_cat/nodes
/_cat/tasks
/_cat/indices
/_cat/indices/{index}
/_cat/segments
/_cat/segments/{index}
/_cat/count
/_cat/count/{index}
/_cat/recovery
/_cat/recovery/{index}
/_cat/health
/_cat/pending_tasks
/_cat/aliases
/_cat/aliases/{alias}
/_cat/thread_pool
/_cat/thread_pool/{thread_pools}
/_cat/plugins
/_cat/fielddata
/_cat/fielddata/{fields}
/_cat/nodeattrs
/_cat/repositories
/_cat/snapshots/{repository}
/_cat/templates

```

You can use parameter help to obtain the available headers, for example:

`GET /_cat/health?help`

then use paremeter v and h to filter:

`GET /_cat/health?v&h=epoch,cluster,status`

Hope it helps,  
LG

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![learner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b782af/32.png) [@learner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/learner)\
**Post date:** [December 8, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-useful-api-requests-for-administration/109973/3 "2017-12-08T16:23:23Z")

</div>

Excellent!

Thank you very much, Luiz!

- Young

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 5, 2018, 4:23pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-are-useful-api-requests-for-administration/109973/4 "2018-01-05T16:23:36Z")

</div>

This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.