# What data type can be indexed in elasticsearch?

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-data-type-can-be-indexed-in-elasticsearch/68864
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [December 13, 2016, 12:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-data-type-can-be-indexed-in-elasticsearch/68864 "2016-12-13T12:17:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![sunilmchaudhari](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/sunilmchaudhari/32/9475_2.png) [@sunilmchaudhari](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/sunilmchaudhari)
#### Post date: [December 13, 2016, 12:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-data-type-can-be-indexed-in-elasticsearch/68864/1 "2016-12-13T12:17:27Z")

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Hi,  
Can we index any type other than the text? e.g. images, video, audio etc?  
How can we achieve that? what kind of shipper is avaialbel for this?  
br,  
Sunil

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### Author: ![cbuescher](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/cbuescher/32/60402_2.png) [@cbuescher](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/cbuescher)
#### Post date: [December 13, 2016, 12:34pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-data-type-can-be-indexed-in-elasticsearch/68864/2 "2016-12-13T12:34:05Z")

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Hi,

see [Field Datatypes](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/2.3/mapping-types.html) for a quick overview about the supported types. There is a [binary data type](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/5.1/binary.html) that can be used to store blobs like images etc... as Base64 encoded string, but most of the time I think its better storing binary data elsewhere outside elasticsearch and only store pointers to it, since binary data is not searchable and can increase your index size dramatically.

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### Author: ![dadoonet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/dadoonet/32/137187_2.png) [@dadoonet](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dadoonet)
#### Post date: [December 13, 2016, 1:28pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-data-type-can-be-indexed-in-elasticsearch/68864/3 "2016-12-13T13:28:16Z")

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Have a look at:

> **[dadoonet/fscrawler](https://github.com/dadoonet/fscrawler)**
>
> fscrawler - Elasticsearch File System Crawler (FS Crawler)

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### Author: ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2017, 1:28pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/what-data-type-can-be-indexed-in-elasticsearch/68864/4 "2017-01-10T13:28:34Z")

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