While Kibana is the standard companion for Elasticsearch, its resource footprint can be heavy for simple management tasks. ElasticVue offers a minimalist desktop alternative that provides essential GUI capabilities for interacting with your ES clusters.

Environment Setup

Download the appropriate binary for your operating system from the GitHub releases page. For instance, macOS users would select the .dmg package. Once installed, launch the application to access the main dashboard.

Connecting to a Cluster

1. Click the Add Elasticsearch Cluster button.
2. Configure the authentication method (None, Basic Auth, or API Key).
3. Use the Test Connection feature to verify connectivity.
4. Upon success, save the configuration to view the dashboard.

The dashboard displays node statistics, health status, and provides navigation for shards, indices, search queries, REST API calls, snapshots, and settings.

Defining a New Index

Instead of using raw HTTP requests, you can utilize the built-in REST tool within ElasticVue. Below is a schema definition for a directory resource endex:

PUT /sample_directory_resources
{
  "settings": {
    "number_of_shards": 1
  },
  "mappings": {
    "properties": {
      "folder_name": {
        "type": "text",
        "fields": {
          "raw": {
            "type": "keyword"
          }
        }
      },
      "type": {
        "type": "keyword"
      },
      "ref_id": {
        "type": "keyword"
      },
      "created_on": {
        "type": "date",
        "format": "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss||epoch_millis"
      },
      "modified_on": {
        "type": "date",
        "format": "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss||epoch_millis"
      },
      "labels": {
        "type": "text",
        "fields": {
          "raw": {
            "type": "keyword"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

To execute this, navigate to the REST section in ElasticVue, paste the JSON into the editor, and click the send button to receive the confirmation response.

Ingesting Documents

You can add records to you're endex using the POST method. The following example inserts a single document into the sample_directory_resources index:

POST /sample_directory_resources/_doc/101
{
  "folder_name": "Vendor:KHBH-20241016-0001",
  "type": "info_supplier",
  "ref_id": "1",
  "created_on": "2024-11-06 10:59:00",
  "modified_on": "2024-11-06 10:59:00",
  "labels": ["Vendor", "2024", "New Partnership"]
}

Browsing Stored Data

To inspect the inserted data, switch to the Indices tab. Select the specific index (e.g., sample_directory_resources) to list all documents. You can click the action menu next to a record to view the full JSON details.