Neo4j: Change legacy index from exact to fulltext - rest

Question

In my Neo4j (2.1.1 Community Edition) database I have Lucene legacy index in place called node_auto_index:
GET http://localhost:7474/db/data/index/node/
{
"node_auto_index": {
"template": "http://localhost:7474/db/data/index/node/node_auto_index/{key}/{value}",
"provider": "lucene",
"type": "exact"
}
}
Now I would like to change the type from "exact" to "fulltext". How can I do that using REST? I tried the following approaches but neither of them worked:
DELETE and recreate
I tried to delete it first before recreating as "fulltext", but it is read-only:
DELETE http://localhost:7474/db/data/index/node/node_auto_index/node_auto_index
{
"message": "read only index",
"exception": "UnsupportedOperationException",
"fullname": "java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException",
"stacktrace": [
"org.neo4j.kernel.impl.coreapi.AbstractAutoIndexerImpl$ReadOnlyIndexToIndexAdapter.readOnlyIndex(AbstractAutoIndexerImpl.java:254)",
"org.neo4j.kernel.impl.coreapi.AbstractAutoIndexerImpl$ReadOnlyIndexToIndexAdapter.delete(AbstractAutoIndexerImpl.java:290)",
"org.neo4j.server.rest.web.DatabaseActions.removeNodeIndex(DatabaseActions.java:437)",
"org.neo4j.server.rest.web.RestfulGraphDatabase.deleteNodeIndex(RestfulGraphDatabase.java:935)",
"java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)",
"org.neo4j.server.rest.transactional.TransactionalRequestDispatcher.dispatch(TransactionalRequestDispatcher.java:139)",
"java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)"
]
}
POST to replace
POST http://localhost:7474/db/data/index/node/
{
"name" : "node_auto_index",
"config" : {
"to_lower_case" : "true",
"type" : "fulltext",
"provider" : "lucene"
}
}
 
{
"message": "Supplied index configuration:\n{to_lower_case=true, type=fulltext, provider=lucene}\ndoesn't match stored config in a valid way:\n{provider=lucene, type=exact}\nfor 'node_auto_index'",
"exception": "IllegalArgumentException",
"fullname": "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException",
"stacktrace": [
"org.neo4j.kernel.impl.coreapi.IndexManagerImpl.assertConfigMatches(IndexManagerImpl.java:168)",
"org.neo4j.kernel.impl.coreapi.IndexManagerImpl.findIndexConfig(IndexManagerImpl.java:149)",
"org.neo4j.kernel.impl.coreapi.IndexManagerImpl.getOrCreateIndexConfig(IndexManagerImpl.java:209)",
"org.neo4j.kernel.impl.coreapi.IndexManagerImpl.getOrCreateNodeIndex(IndexManagerImpl.java:314)",
"org.neo4j.kernel.impl.coreapi.IndexManagerImpl.forNodes(IndexManagerImpl.java:302)",
"org.neo4j.server.rest.web.DatabaseActions.createNodeIndex(DatabaseActions.java:398)",
"org.neo4j.server.rest.web.RestfulGraphDatabase.jsonCreateNodeIndex(RestfulGraphDatabase.java:830)",
"java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)",
"org.neo4j.server.rest.transactional.TransactionalRequestDispatcher.dispatch(TransactionalRequestDispatcher.java:139)",
"java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)"
]
}

Answer 1

for all the future readers of this question.
I faced the similar situation and found a much cleaner approach to fix this. Instead of deleting the node_auto_index, try the following steps.
open the shell / command line for the db:
- neo4j-sh (0)$ index --get-config node_auto_index
- ==> {
- ==> "provider": "lucene",
- ==> "type": "exact"
- ==> }
- neo4j-sh (0)$ index --set-config node_auto_index type fulltext
- ==> INDEX CONFIGURATION CHANGED, INDEX DATA MAY BE INVALID
- neo4j-sh (0)$ index --get-config node_auto_index
- ==> {
- ==> "provider": "lucene",
- ==> "type": "fulltext"
- ==> }
- neo4j-sh (0)$
Worked perfectly fine for me . Hope this helps someone in need :-)

Answer 2

Neo4j does not allow deleting the auto indexes node_auto_index and relationship_auto_index, nor by REST nor by any other API.
However there's a dirty trick to do the job. This trick will delete all auto and other legacy indexes. It does not touch the schema indexes. Be warned, it's a potentially dangerous operation, so make sure you have a valid backup in place. Stop the database and then do a
rm -rf data/graph.db/index*
Restart the database and all auto and legacy indexes are gone.