Creating a REST plugin
In the previous recipe we read how to build an analyzer plugin that extends the query capabilities of Elasticsearch. In this recipe, we will see how to create one of the most common Elasticsearch plugins.
This kind of plugin allows the standard REST calls to be extended with custom ones to easily improve the capabilities of Elasticsearch.
In this recipe, we will see how to define a REST entry-point and create its action; in the next one, we'll see how to execute this action distributed in shards.
Getting ready
You need an up-and-running Elasticsearch installation as we described in the Downloading and installing Elasticsearch recipe in Chapter 2, Downloading and Setup.
A Maven tool, or an IDE that supports Java programming, such as Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA. The code for this recipe is available in the chapter17/rest_plugin directory.
How to do it...
To create a REST entry-point, we need to create the action and then register it in the plugin. We will perform the following...
