How to do it...

The HTTP method that's that's used to delete an index is DELETE. The following URL contains just the index name:

http://<server>/<index_name>

To delete an index, we will perform the following steps:

1. Execute a DELETE call by writing the following command:

DELETE /myindex

1. We then check the result returned by Elasticsearch. If everything is all right, it should be as follows:

{
  "acknowledged" : true
}

1. If the index doesn't exist, a 404 error is returned:

{
  "error" : {
    "root_cause" : [
      {
        "type" : "index_not_found_exception",
        "reason" : "no such index [myindex]",
        "resource.type" : "index_or_alias",
        "resource.id" : "myindex",
        "index_uuid" : "_na_",
        "index" : "myindex"
      }
    ],
    "type" : "index_not_found_exception",
    "reason" : "no such index [myindex]",
    "resource.type" : "index_or_alias",
    "resource.id" : "myindex",
    "index_uuid" : "_na_",
    "index" : "myindex"
  },
  "status" : 404
}