Elasticseach error with null value for dense vector datatype - elasticsearch

Question

I created an index with a dense_vector:
curl -X PUT "localhost:9200/my_index?pretty" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d'
{
"mappings": {
"properties": {
"my_vector": {
"type": "dense_vector",
"dims": 3
}
}
}
}
'
When I index a document with a vector it works well:
curl -X PUT "localhost:9200/my_index/_doc/1?pretty" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d'
{
"my_vector" : [0.5, 10, 6]
}
'
BUT when I index a document with a null value for the vector it returns an error:
curl -X PUT "localhost:9200/my_index/_doc/2?pretty" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d'
{
"my_vector" : null
}
'
The error is:
{
"error" : {
"root_cause" : [
{
"type" : "parsing_exception",
"reason" : "Failed to parse object: expecting token of type [VALUE_NUMBER] but found [END_OBJECT]",
"line" : 5,
"col" : 1
}
],
"type" : "mapper_parsing_exception",
"reason" : "failed to parse",
"caused_by" : {
"type" : "parsing_exception",
"reason" : "Failed to parse object: expecting token of type [VALUE_NUMBER] but found [END_OBJECT]",
"line" : 5,
"col" : 1
}
},
"status" : 400
}
How can I handle null value for vector type in ES?

Answer 1

instead of setting it to null you can remove that field from that particular document which is equivalent to setting it as null using the followingrequest
curl --location --request POST 'http://{ip}:9200/my_index/_doc/{docId}/_update' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data-raw '{
"script" : "ctx._source.remove(\"my_vector\")"
}'