Collection Alias

An alias is a virtual collection name that points to a real collection. If you're familiar with symbolic links on Linux, it's very similar to that.

Aliases are useful when you want to reindex your data in the background on a new collection and switch your application to it without any changes to your code. Let's take an example.

Let's say we have a collection called companies_june10 and an alias called companies pointing to that collection.

collection ---> companies_june10

On the next day (June 11), we will create a new collection called companies_june11 and start indexing the documents in the background into this collection. When we are done indexing, if we updated the companies alias to point to this new collection, your application would immediately start querying against the freshly indexed collection.

collection ---> companies_june11

Convenient isn't it? Let's now look at how we can create, update and manage aliases.

Create or Update an alias

Sample Response

Definition

PUT ${TYPESENSE_HOST}/aliases/:alias

Arguments

Parameter	Required	Description
collection_name	yes	Name of the collection you wish to map the alias to.

Retrieve an alias

We can find out which collection an alias points to by fetching it.

Sample Response

Definition

GET ${TYPESENSE_HOST}/aliases/:alias

List all aliases

List all aliases and the corresponding collections that they map to.

Sample Response

Definition

GET ${TYPESENSE_HOST}/aliases

Delete an alias

Sample Response

Definition

DELETE ${TYPESENSE_HOST}/aliases/:alias