Version: 0.4.0

Command-line options

Quickwit command line tool lets you create, ingest, search, start search and indexer servers. For configuration, quickwit needs a config file path that you can specify with QW_CONFIG environment variable: export QW_CONFIG=./config/quickwit.yaml.

This page documents all the available commands, related options, and environment variables.

caution

Before using Quickwit with object storage, consult our guidelines for deploying on AWS S3 to avoid surprises on your next bill.

Commands

Command-line synopsis syntax

Help

quickwit or quickwit --help displays the list of available commands.

quickwit <command name> --help displays the documentation for the command and a usage example.

Version

quickwit --version displays the version. It is helpful for reporting bugs.

Syntax

The CLI is structured into high-level commands with subcommands. quickwit [command] [subcommand] [args].

command: index, split, source and service.

run

Runs quickwit services. By default, metastore, indexer, searcher and janitor are started.

Indexer service

The indexer service will list indexes and their associated sources, and run an indexing pipeline for every single source.

Janitor service

The Janitor service is a maintenance service in charge of keeping Quickwit cluster clean by running maintenance tasks. Garbage collection, executing delete tasks and applying retention policies to indexes are all the Janitor service duties.

Metastore service

The metastore service exposes Quickwit metastore over the network. This is a core internal service that is needed to operate Quickwit. As such, at least one running instance of this service is required for other services to work.

Searcher service

Starts a web server at rest_listing_address:rest_list_port that exposes the Quickwit REST API where rest_listing_address and rest_list_port are defined in Quickwit config file (quickwit.yaml). The node can optionally join a cluster using the peer_seeds parameter. This list of node addresses is used to discover the remaining peer nodes in the cluster through a gossip protocol, see chitchat.

note

Behind the scenes, Quickwit needs to open the following port for cluster formation and workload distribution:

TCP port (default is 7280) for REST API
TCP and UDP port (default is 7280) for cluster membership protocol
TCP port + 1 (default is 7281) for gRPC address for the distributed search

If ports are already taken, the serve command will fail.

quickwit run [args]

Synopsis

quickwit run
    [--service <service>]

Options

--service Services (indexer|searcher|janitor|metastore) to run. If unspecified, all the supported services are started. \

Examples

Starts an indexer service

quickwit run --service indexer --config=./config/quickwit.yaml

Start a searcher service

quickwit run --service searcher --config=./config/quickwit.yaml

Start a janitor service

quickwit run --service janitor --config=./config/quickwit.yaml

Start a metastore service

quickwit run --service metastore --config=./config/quickwit.yaml

Make a search request on a wikipedia index

# To create wikipedia index and ingest data, go to our tutorial https://quickwit.io/docs/get-started/quickstart.
# Start a searcher.
quickwit run --service searcher --config=./config/quickwit.yaml
# Make a request.
curl "http://127.0.0.1:7280/api/v1/wikipedia/search?query=barack+obama"

Make a search stream request on a Github archive index

# Create gh-archive index.
curl -o gh_archive_index_config.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/quickwit-oss/quickwit/main/config/tutorials/gh-archive/index-config.yaml
quickwit index create --index-config gh_archive_index_config.yaml --config ./config/quickwit.yaml
# Download a data sample and ingest it.
curl https://quickwit-datasets-public.s3.amazonaws.com/gh-archive-2022-01-text-only-10000.json.gz | gunzip | cargo r index ingest --index gh-archive --config=./config/quickwit.yaml
# Start server.
quickwit run --service searcher --config=./config/quickwit.yaml
# Finally make the search stream request.
curl "http://127.0.0.1:7280/api/v1/gh-archive/search/stream?query=log4j&fastField=id&outputFormat=csv"
# Make a search stream request with HTTP2.
curl --http2-prior-knowledge "http://127.0.0.1:7280/api/v1/gh-archive/search/stream?query=log4j&fastField=id&outputFormat=csv"

Add a source to an index and start an Indexer

quickwit source add --index wikipedia --source wikipedia-source --type file --params '{"filepath":"wiki-articles-10000.json"}'
quickwit run --service indexer --indexes wikipedia --config=./config/quickwit.yaml

index

Create your index, ingest data, search, describe... every command you need to manage indexes.

index list

List indexes. quickwit index list [args] quickwit index ls [args]

Synopsis

quickwit index list
    [--metastore-uri <metastore-uri>]

Options

--metastore-uri Metastore URI. Override the metastore_uri parameter defined in the config file. Defaults to file-backed, but could be Amazon S3 or PostgreSQL. \

Examples

List indexes

quickwit index list --config ./config/quickwit.yaml
# Or with alias.
quickwit index ls --config ./config/quickwit.yaml

                                    Indexes
+-----------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Index ID  |                       Index URI                        |
+-----------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| hdfs-logs | file:///home/quickwit-indices/qwdata/indexes/hdfs-logs |
+-----------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| wikipedia | file:///home/quickwit-indices/qwdata/indexes/wikipedia |
+-----------+--------------------------------------------------------+

index create

Creates an index of ID index at index-uri configured by a YAML config file located at index-config. The index config lets you define the mapping of your document on the index and how each field is stored and indexed. If index-uri is omitted, index-uri will be set to {default_index_root_uri}/{index}, more info on Quickwit config docs. The command fails if an index already exists unless overwrite is passed. When overwrite is enabled, the command deletes all the files stored at index-uri before creating a new index.

quickwit index create [args]

Synopsis

quickwit index create
    --index-config <index-config>
    [--overwrite]
    [--yes]

Options

--index-config Location of the index config file. \ --overwrite Overwrites pre-existing index. This will delete all existing data stored at index-uri before creating a new index. \ --yes Assume "yes" as an answer to all prompts and run non-interactively. \

Examples

Create a new index.

curl -o wikipedia_index_config.yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/quickwit-oss/quickwit/main/config/tutorials/wikipedia/index-config.yaml
quickwit index create --index-config wikipedia_index_config.yaml  --config=./config/quickwit.yaml

index ingest

Indexes a dataset consisting of newline-delimited JSON objects located at input-path or read from stdin. The data is appended to the target index of ID index unless overwrite is passed. input-path can be a file or another command output piped into stdin. Currently, only local datasets are supported. By default, Quickwit's indexer will work with a heap of 2 GiB of memory. Learn how to change heap-size in the index config doc page.

quickwit index ingest [args]

Synopsis

quickwit index ingest
    --index <index>
    [--input-path <input-path>]
    [--overwrite]
    [--keep-cache]
    [--transform-script <vrl-script>]

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --input-path Location of the input file. \ --overwrite Overwrites pre-existing index. \ --keep-cache Does not clear local cache directory upon completion. \ --transform-script VRL script as a string.

Examples

Indexing a dataset from a file

curl -o wiki-articles-10000.json https://quickwit-datasets-public.s3.amazonaws.com/wiki-articles-10000.json
quickwit index ingest --index wikipedia --config=./config/quickwit.yaml --input-path wiki-articles-10000.json

Indexing a dataset from stdin

cat hdfs-log.json | quickwit index ingest --index wikipedia --config=./config/quickwit.yaml

Applying a transform

quickwit index ingest --index wikipedia --config=./config/quickwit.yaml --input-path wiki-articles-10000.json --transform-script ".title = downcase(string!(.title))`

index ingest-api

Enables/disables the ingest API of an index. quickwit index ingest-api [args]

Synopsis

quickwit index ingest-api
    --index <index>
    --enable
    [--disable]

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --enable Enables the ingest API. \ --disable Disables the ingest API. \

index describe

Displays descriptive statistics of an index: number of published splits, number of documents, splits min/max timestamps, size of splits. quickwit index describe [args]

Synopsis

quickwit index describe
    --index <index>

Options

--index ID of the target index \

Examples

Displays descriptive statistics of your index

quickwit index describe --index wikipedia --config ./config/quickwit.yaml

1. General infos
===============================================================================
Index id:                           wikipedia
Index uri:                          file:///home/quickwit-indices/qwdata/indexes/wikipedia
Number of published splits:         1
Number of published documents:      300000
Size of published splits:           448 MB

2. Statistics on splits
===============================================================================
Document count stats:
Mean ± σ in [min … max]:            300000 ± 0 in [300000 … 300000]
Quantiles [1%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 99%]: [300000, 300000, 300000, 300000, 300000]

Size in MB stats:
Mean ± σ in [min … max]:            448 ± 0 in [448 … 448]
Quantiles [1%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 99%]: [448, 448, 448, 448, 448]

index search

Searches an index with ID --index and returns the documents matching the query specified with --query. More details on the query language page. The offset of the first hit returned and the number of hits returned can be set with the start-offset and max-hits options. It's possible to override the default search fields search-fields option to define the list of fields that Quickwit will search into if the user query does not explicitly target a field in the query. Quickwit will return snippets of the matching content when requested via the snippet-fields options. Search can also be limited to a time range using the start-timestamp and end-timestamp options. These timestamp options are useful for boosting query performance when using a time series dataset.

danger

The start_timestamp and end_timestamp should be specified in seconds regardless of the timestamp field precision. The timestamp field precision only affects the way it's stored as fast-fields, whereas the document filtering is always performed in seconds.

quickwit index search [args]

Synopsis

quickwit index search
    --index <index>
    --query <query>
    [--aggregation <aggregation>]
    [--max-hits <max-hits>]
    [--start-offset <start-offset>]
    [--search-fields <search-fields>]
    [--snippet-fields <snippet-fields>]
    [--start-timestamp <start-timestamp>]
    [--end-timestamp <end-timestamp>]
    [--sort-by-score]

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --query Query expressed in natural query language ((barack AND obama) OR "president of united states"). Learn more on https://quickwit.io/docs/reference/search-language. \ --aggregation JSON serialized aggregation request in tantivy/elasticsearch format. \ --max-hits Maximum number of hits returned. (default: 20) \ --start-offset Offset in the global result set of the first hit returned. (default: 0) \ --search-fields List of fields that Quickwit will search into if the user query does not explicitly target a field in the query. It overrides the default search fields defined in the index config. Space-separated list, e.g. "field1 field2". \ --snippet-fields List of fields that Quickwit will return snippet highlight on. Space-separated list, e.g. "field1 field2". \ --start-timestamp Filters out documents before that timestamp (time-series indexes only). \ --end-timestamp Filters out documents after that timestamp (time-series indexes only). \ --sort-by-score Setting this flag calculates and sorts documents by their BM25 score. \

Examples

Searching a index

quickwit index search --index wikipedia --query "Barack Obama" --config ./config/quickwit.yaml
# If you have jq installed.
quickwit index search --index wikipedia --query "Barack Obama" --config ./config/quickwit.yaml | jq '.hits[].title'

Sorting documents by their BM25 score

quickwit index search --index wikipedia --query "Barack Obama" --sort-by-score --config ./config/quickwit.yaml

Limiting the result set to 50 hits

quickwit index search --index wikipedia --query "Barack Obama" --max-hits 50 --config ./config/quickwit.yaml
# If you have jq installed.
quickwit index search --index wikipedia --query "Barack Obama" --max-hits 50 --config ./config/quickwit.yaml | jq '.num_hits'

Looking for matches in the title only

quickwit index search --index wikipedia --query "search" --search-fields title --config ./config/quickwit.yaml
# If you have jq installed.
quickwit index search --index wikipedia --query "search" --search-fields title --config ./config/quickwit.yaml | jq '.hits[].title'

index gc

Garbage collects stale staged splits and splits marked for deletion.

note

Intermediate files are created while executing Quickwit commands. These intermediate files are always cleaned at the end of each successfully executed command. However, failed or interrupted commands can leave behind intermediate files that need to be removed. Also, note that using a very short grace period (like seconds) can cause the removal of intermediate files being operated on, especially when using Quickwit concurrently on the same index. In practice, you can settle with the default value (1 hour) and only specify a lower value if you really know what you are doing.

quickwit index gc [args]

Synopsis

quickwit index gc
    --index <index>
    [--grace-period <grace-period>]
    [--dry-run]

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --grace-period Threshold period after which stale staged splits are garbage collected. (default: 1h) \ --dry-run Executes the command in dry run mode and only displays the list of splits candidates for garbage collection. \

index clear

Clears and index. Deletes all its splits and resets its checkpoint. This operation is destructive and cannot be undone, proceed with caution. quickwit index clear [args] quickwit index clr [args]

Synopsis

quickwit index clear
    --index <index>
    [--yes]

Options

--index Index ID \ --yes \

index delete

Deletes an index. This operation is destructive and cannot be undone, proceed with caution. quickwit index delete [args] quickwit index del [args]

Synopsis

quickwit index delete
    --index <index>
    [--dry-run]

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --dry-run Executes the command in dry run mode and only displays the list of splits candidates for deletion. \

Examples

Delete your index

quickwit index delete --index wikipedia --config ./config/quickwit.yaml

source

Manages sources.

source create

Adds a new source to an index. quickwit source create [args]

Synopsis

quickwit source create
    --index <index>
    --source-config <source-config>

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --source-config Path to source config file. Please, refer to the documentation for more details. \

source enable

Enables a source for an index. quickwit source enable [args]

Synopsis

quickwit source enable
    --index <index>
    --source <source>

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --source ID of the source. \

source disable

Disables a source for an index. quickwit source disable [args]

Synopsis

quickwit source disable
    --index <index>
    --source <source>

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --source ID of the source. \

source delete

Deletes a source from an index. quickwit source delete [args] quickwit source del [args]

Synopsis

quickwit source delete
    --index <index>
    --source <source>

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --source ID of the source. \

Examples

Delete a wikipedia-source source

quickwit source delete --index wikipedia --source wikipedia-source --config ./config/quickwit.yaml

source describe

Describes a source. quickwit source describe [args] quickwit source desc [args]

Synopsis

quickwit source describe
    --index <index>
    --source <source>

Options

--index ID of the target index \ --source ID of the source. \

Examples

Describe a wikipedia-source source

quickwit source describe --index wikipedia --source wikipedia-source --config ./config/quickwit.yaml

source list

Lists the sources of an index. quickwit source list [args] quickwit source ls [args]

Synopsis

quickwit source list
    --index <index>

Options

--index ID of the target index \

Examples

List wikipedia index sources

quickwit source list --index wikipedia --config ./config/quickwit.yaml

source reset-checkpoint

Resets a source checkpoint. This operation is destructive and cannot be undone. Proceed with caution. quickwit source reset-checkpoint [args] quickwit source reset [args]

Synopsis

quickwit source reset-checkpoint
    --index <index>
    --source <source>

Options

--index Index ID \ --source Source ID \

split

Performs operations on splits (list, describe, mark for deletion, extract).

split list

Lists the splits of an index. quickwit split list [args] quickwit split ls [args]

Synopsis

quickwit split list
    --index <index>
    [--states <states>]
    [--create-date <create-date>]
    [--start-date <start-date>]
    [--end-date <end-date>]
    [--tags <tags>]
    [--output-format <output-format>]

Options

--index Target index ID \ --states Selects the splits whose states are included in this comma-separated list of states. Possible values are staged, published, and marked. \ --create-date Selects the splits whose creation dates are before this date. \ --start-date Selects the splits that contain documents after this date (time-series indexes only). \ --end-date Selects the splits that contain documents before this date (time-series indexes only). \ --tags Selects the splits whose tags are all included in this comma-separated list of tags. \ --output-format Output format. Possible values are table, json, and prettyjson. \

split mark-for-deletion

Marks one or multiple splits of an index for deletion. quickwit split mark-for-deletion [args] quickwit split mark [args]

Synopsis

quickwit split mark-for-deletion
    --index <index>
    --splits <splits>

Options

--index Target index ID \ --splits Comma-separated list of split IDs \

Environment Variables

QW_CONFIG

Specifies the path to the quickwit config. Every command requires the config, which you can set once and for all with the QW_CONFIG environment variable.

Example

export QW_CONFIG=config/quickwit.yaml

QW_DISABLE_TELEMETRY

Disables telemetry when set to any non-empty value.

Example

QW_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 quickwit help

Commands​

Help​

Version​

Syntax​

run​

Indexer service​

Janitor service​

Metastore service​

Searcher service​

index​

index list​

index create​

index ingest​

index ingest-api​

index describe​

index search​

index gc​

index clear​

index delete​

source​

source create​

source enable​

source disable​

source delete​

source describe​

source list​

source reset-checkpoint​

split​

split list​

split mark-for-deletion​

Environment Variables​

QW_CONFIG​

QW_DISABLE_TELEMETRY​

Commands

Help

Version

Syntax

run

Indexer service

Janitor service

Metastore service

Searcher service

index

index list

index create

index ingest

index ingest-api

index describe

index search

index gc

index clear

index delete

source

source create

source enable

source disable

source delete

source describe

source list

source reset-checkpoint

split

split list

split mark-for-deletion

Environment Variables

QW_CONFIG

QW_DISABLE_TELEMETRY