This multi-bucket aggregation is similar to the normal
histogram
, but it can
only be used with date or date range values. Because dates are represented internally in
Elasticsearch as long values, it is possible, but not as accurate, to use the
normal
histogram
on dates as well. The main difference in the two APIs is
that here the interval can be specified using date/time expressions. Time-based
data requires special support because time-based intervals are not always a
fixed length.
Like the histogram, values are rounded
down
into the closest bucket. For
example, if the interval is a calendar day,
2020-01-03T07:00:01Z
is rounded to
2020-01-03T00:00:00Z
. Values are rounded as follows:
bucket_key = Math.floor(value / interval) * interval
When configuring a date histogram aggregation, the interval can be specified
in two manners: calendar-aware time intervals, and fixed time intervals.
Calendar-aware intervals understand that daylight savings changes the length
of specific days, months have different amounts of days, and leap seconds can
be tacked onto a particular year.
Fixed intervals are, by contrast, always multiples of SI units and do not change
based on calendaring context.
Combined
interval
field is deprecated
[
7.2
]
Deprecated in 7.2.
interval
field is deprecated
Historically both calendar and fixed
intervals were configured in a single
interval
field, which led to confusing
semantics. Specifying
1d
would be assumed as a calendar-aware time,
whereas
2d
would be interpreted as fixed time. To get "one day" of fixed time,
the user would need to specify the next smaller unit (in this case,
24h
).
This combined behavior was often unknown to users, and even when knowledgeable about
the behavior it was difficult to use and confusing.
This behavior has been deprecated in favor of two new, explicit fields:
calendar_interval
and
fixed_interval
.
By forcing a choice between calendar and intervals up front, the semantics of the interval
are clear to the user immediately and there is no ambiguity. The old
interval
field
will be removed in the future.
Calendar-aware intervals are configured with the
calendar_interval
parameter.
You can specify calendar intervals using the unit name, such as
month
, or as a
single unit quantity, such as
1M
. For example,
day
and
1d
are equivalent.
Multiple quantities, such as
2d
, are not supported.
The accepted calendar intervals are:
All minutes begin at 00 seconds.
One minute is the interval between 00 seconds of the first minute and 00
seconds of the following minute in the specified time zone, compensating for any
intervening leap seconds, so that the number of minutes and seconds past the
hour is the same at the start and end.
hour
,
1h
All hours begin at 00 minutes and 00 seconds.
One hour (1h) is the interval between 00:00 minutes of the first hour and 00:00
minutes of the following hour in the specified time zone, compensating for any
intervening leap seconds, so that the number of minutes and seconds past the hour
is the same at the start and end.
day
,
1d
All days begin at the earliest possible time, which is usually 00:00:00
(midnight).
One day (1d) is the interval between the start of the day and the start of
the following day in the specified time zone, compensating for any intervening
time changes.
week
,
1w
One week is the interval between the start day_of_week:hour:minute:second
and the same day of the week and time of the following week in the specified
time zone.
month
,
1M
One month is the interval between the start day of the month and time of
day and the same day of the month and time of the following month in the specified
time zone, so that the day of the month and time of day are the same at the start
and end.
quarter
,
1q
One quarter is the interval between the start day of the month and
time of day and the same day of the month and time of day three months later,
so that the day of the month and time of day are the same at the start and end.
year
,
1y
One year is the interval between the start day of the month and time of
day and the same day of the month and time of day the following year in the
specified time zone, so that the date and time are the same at the start and end.
As an example, here is an aggregation requesting bucket intervals of a month in calendar time:
POST /sales/_search?size=0
"aggs": {
"sales_over_time": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date",
"calendar_interval": "month"
If you attempt to use multiples of calendar units, the aggregation will fail because only
singular calendar units are supported:
POST /sales/_search?size=0
"aggs": {
"sales_over_time": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date",
"calendar_interval": "2d"
"root_cause" : [...],
"type" : "x_content_parse_exception",
"reason" : "[1:82] [date_histogram] failed to parse field [calendar_interval]",
"caused_by" : {
"type" : "illegal_argument_exception",
"reason" : "The supplied interval [2d] could not be parsed as a calendar interval.",
"stack_trace" : "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: The supplied interval [2d] could not be parsed as a calendar interval."
Fixed intervals are configured with the fixed_interval
parameter.
In contrast to calendar-aware intervals, fixed intervals are a fixed number of SI
units and never deviate, regardless of where they fall on the calendar. One second
is always composed of 1000ms
. This allows fixed intervals to be specified in
any multiple of the supported units.
However, it means fixed intervals cannot express other units such as months,
since the duration of a month is not a fixed quantity. Attempting to specify
a calendar interval like month or quarter will throw an exception.
The accepted units for fixed intervals are:
Defined as 24 hours (86,400,000 milliseconds).
All days begin at the earliest possible time, which is usually 00:00:00
(midnight).
If we try to recreate the "month" calendar_interval
from earlier, we can approximate that with
30 fixed days:
POST /sales/_search?size=0
"aggs": {
"sales_over_time": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date",
"fixed_interval": "30d"
But if we try to use a calendar unit that is not supported, such as weeks, we’ll get an exception:
POST /sales/_search?size=0
"aggs": {
"sales_over_time": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date",
"fixed_interval": "2w"
"root_cause" : [...],
"type" : "x_content_parse_exception",
"reason" : "[1:82] [date_histogram] failed to parse field [fixed_interval]",
"caused_by" : {
"type" : "illegal_argument_exception",
"reason" : "failed to parse setting [date_histogram.fixedInterval] with value [2w] as a time value: unit is missing or unrecognized",
"stack_trace" : "java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: failed to parse setting [date_histogram.fixedInterval] with value [2w] as a time value: unit is missing or unrecognized"
In all cases, when the specified end time does not exist, the actual end time is
the closest available time after the specified end.
Widely distributed applications must also consider vagaries such as countries that
start and stop daylight savings time at 12:01 A.M., so end up with one minute of
Sunday followed by an additional 59 minutes of Saturday once a year, and countries
that decide to move across the international date line. Situations like
that can make irregular time zone offsets seem easy.
As always, rigorous testing, especially around time-change events, will ensure
that your time interval specification is
what you intend it to be.
To avoid unexpected results, all connected servers and clients must
sync to a reliable network time service.
Internally, a date is represented as a 64 bit number representing a timestamp
in milliseconds-since-the-epoch (01/01/1970 midnight UTC). These timestamps are
returned as the key
name of the bucket. The key_as_string
is the same
timestamp converted to a formatted
date string using the format
parameter specification:
If you don’t specify format
, the first date
format specified in the field mapping is used.
Elasticsearch stores date-times in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). By default, all bucketing and
rounding is also done in UTC. Use the time_zone
parameter to indicate
that bucketing should use a different time zone.
For example, if the interval is a calendar day and the time zone is
America/New_York
then 2020-01-03T01:00:01Z
is :
# Converted to 2020-01-02T18:00:01
# Rounded down to 2020-01-02T00:00:00
# Then converted back to UTC to produce 2020-01-02T05:00:00:00Z
# Finally, when the bucket is turned into a string key it is printed in
America/New_York
so it’ll display as "2020-01-02T00:00:00"
.
It looks like:
bucket_key = localToUtc(Math.floor(utcToLocal(value) / interval) * interval))
You can specify time zones as an ISO 8601 UTC offset (e.g. +01:00
or
-08:00
) or as an IANA time zone ID,
such as America/Los_Angeles
.
Consider the following example:
PUT my-index-000001/_doc/1?refresh
"date": "2015-10-01T00:30:00Z"
PUT my-index-000001/_doc/2?refresh
"date": "2015-10-01T01:30:00Z"
GET my-index-000001/_search?size=0
"aggs": {
"by_day": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date",
"calendar_interval": "day"
If you don’t specify a time zone, UTC is used. This would result in both of these
documents being placed into the same day bucket, which starts at midnight UTC
on 1 October 2015:
"aggregations": {
"by_day": {
"buckets": [
"key_as_string": "2015-10-01T00:00:00.000Z",
"key": 1443657600000,
"doc_count": 2
If you specify a time_zone
of -01:00
, midnight in that time zone is one hour
before midnight UTC:
GET my-index-000001/_search?size=0
"aggs": {
"by_day": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date",
"calendar_interval": "day",
"time_zone": "-01:00"
Now the first document falls into the bucket for 30 September 2015, while the
second document falls into the bucket for 1 October 2015:
"aggregations": {
"by_day": {
"buckets": [
"key_as_string": "2015-09-30T00:00:00.000-01:00",
"key": 1443574800000,
"doc_count": 1
"key_as_string": "2015-10-01T00:00:00.000-01:00",
"key": 1443661200000,
"doc_count": 1
Many time zones shift their clocks for daylight savings time. Buckets
close to the moment when those changes happen can have slightly different sizes
than you would expect from the calendar_interval
or fixed_interval
.
For example, consider a DST start in the CET
time zone: on 27 March 2016 at 2am,
clocks were turned forward 1 hour to 3am local time. If you use day
as the
calendar_interval
, the bucket covering that day will only hold data for 23
hours instead of the usual 24 hours for other buckets. The same is true for
shorter intervals, like a fixed_interval
of 12h
, where you’ll have only a 11h
bucket on the morning of 27 March when the DST shift happens.
Use the offset
parameter to change the start value of each bucket by the
specified positive (+
) or negative offset (-
) duration, such as 1h
for
an hour, or 1d
for a day. See Time units for more possible time
duration options.
For example, when using an interval of day
, each bucket runs from midnight
to midnight. Setting the offset
parameter to +6h
changes each bucket
to run from 6am to 6am:
PUT my-index-000001/_doc/1?refresh
"date": "2015-10-01T05:30:00Z"
PUT my-index-000001/_doc/2?refresh
"date": "2015-10-01T06:30:00Z"
GET my-index-000001/_search?size=0
"aggs": {
"by_day": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date",
"calendar_interval": "day",
"offset": "+6h"
Instead of a single bucket starting at midnight, the above request groups the
documents into buckets starting at 6am:
"aggregations": {
"by_day": {
"buckets": [
"key_as_string": "2015-09-30T06:00:00.000Z",
"key": 1443592800000,
"doc_count": 1
"key_as_string": "2015-10-01T06:00:00.000Z",
"key": 1443679200000,
"doc_count": 1
Setting the keyed
flag to true
associates a unique string key with each
bucket and returns the ranges as a hash rather than an array:
POST /sales/_search?size=0
"aggs": {
"sales_over_time": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date",
"calendar_interval": "1M",
"format": "yyyy-MM-dd",
"keyed": true
Response:
"aggregations": {
"sales_over_time": {
"buckets": {
"2015-01-01": {
"key_as_string": "2015-01-01",
"key": 1420070400000,
"doc_count": 3
"2015-02-01": {
"key_as_string": "2015-02-01",
"key": 1422748800000,
"doc_count": 2
"2015-03-01": {
"key_as_string": "2015-03-01",
"key": 1425168000000,
"doc_count": 2
If the data in your documents doesn’t exactly match what you’d like to aggregate,
use a runtime field . For example, if the revenue
for promoted sales should be recognized a day after the sale date:
POST /sales/_search?size=0
"runtime_mappings": {
"date.promoted_is_tomorrow": {
"type": "date",
"script": """
long date = doc['date'].value.toInstant().toEpochMilli();
if (doc['promoted'].value) {
date += 86400;
emit(date);
"aggs": {
"sales_over_time": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date.promoted_is_tomorrow",
"calendar_interval": "1M"
You can control the order of the returned
buckets using the order
settings and filter the returned buckets based on a min_doc_count
setting
(by default all buckets between the first
bucket that matches documents and the last one are returned). This histogram
also supports the extended_bounds
setting, which enables extending the bounds of the histogram beyond the data
itself, and hard_bounds
that limits the histogram to specified bounds.
For more information, see
Extended Bounds
and
Hard Bounds
.
The missing
parameter defines how to treat documents that are missing a value.
By default, they are ignored, but it is also possible to treat them as if they
have a value.
POST /sales/_search?size=0
"aggs": {
"sale_date": {
"date_histogram": {
"field": "date",
"calendar_interval": "year",
"missing": "2000/01/01"
By default the returned buckets are sorted by their key
ascending, but you can
control the order using
the order
setting. This setting supports the same order
functionality as
Terms Aggregation
.
When you need to aggregate the results by day of the week, run a terms
aggregation on a runtime field that returns the day of the week:
POST /sales/_search?size=0
"runtime_mappings": {
"date.day_of_week": {
"type": "keyword",
"script": "emit(doc['date'].value.dayOfWeekEnum.getDisplayName(TextStyle.FULL, Locale.ROOT))"
"aggs": {
"day_of_week": {
"terms": { "field": "date.day_of_week" }
Response:
"aggregations": {
"day_of_week": {
"doc_count_error_upper_bound": 0,
"sum_other_doc_count": 0,
"buckets": [
"key": "Sunday",
"doc_count": 4
"key": "Thursday",
"doc_count": 3
The response will contain all the buckets having the relative day of
the week as key : 1 for Monday, 2 for Tuesday… 7 for Sunday.