The OpenSearch PHP client provides a safer and easier way to interact with your OpenSearch cluster. Rather than using OpenSearch from a browser and potentially exposing your data to the public, you can build an OpenSearch client that takes care of sending requests to your cluster. The client contains a library of APIs that let you perform different operations on your cluster and return a standard response body.
This getting started guide illustrates how to connect to OpenSearch, index documents, and run queries. For the client source code, see the [opensearch-php repo](https://github.com/opensearch-project/opensearch-php).
To create an OpenSearch index with custom settings, use the following code:
```php
$indexName = 'test-index-name';
// Create an index with non-default settings.
$client->indices()->create([
'index' => $indexName,
'body' => [
'settings' => [
'index' => [
'number_of_shards' => 4
]
]
]
]);
```
{% include copy.html %}
## Indexing a document
You can index a document into OpenSearch using the following code:
```php
$client->create([
'index' => $indexName,
'id' => 1,
'body' => [
'title' => 'Moneyball',
'director' => 'Bennett Miller',
'year' => 2011
]
]);
```
{% include copy.html %}
## Searching for documents
The following code uses a `multi_match` query to search for "miller" in the title and director fields. It boosts the documents where "miller" appears in the title field:
```php
var_dump(
$client->search([
'index' => $indexName,
'body' => [
'size' => 5,
'query' => [
'multi_match' => [
'query' => 'miller',
'fields' => ['title^2', 'director']
]
]
]
])
);
```
{% include copy.html %}
## Deleting a document
You can delete a document using the following code:
```php
$client->delete([
'index' => $indexName,
'id' => 1,
]);
```
{% include copy.html %}
## Deleting an index
You can delete an index using the following code:
```php
$client->indices()->delete([
'index' => $indexName
]);
```
{% include copy.html %}
## Sample program
The following sample program creates a client, adds an index with non-default settings, inserts a document, searches for the document, deletes the document, and then deletes the index: