If you're just starting to build out your cluster and data, you may not know exactly how your data should be stored. In those cases, you can use dynamic mappings, which tell OpenSearch to dynamically add data and its fields. However, if you know exactly what types your data falls under and want to enforce that standard, then you can use explicit mappings.
For example, if you want to indicate that `year` should be of type `text` instead of an `integer`, and `age` should be an `integer`, you can do so with explicit mappings. Using dynamic mapping OpenSearch might interpret both `year` and `age` as integers.
When you index a document, OpenSearch adds fields automatically with dynamic mapping. You can also explicitly add fields to an index mapping.
#### Dynamic mapping types
Type | Description
:--- | :---
null | A `null` field can't be indexed or searched. When a field is set to null, OpenSearch behaves as if that field has no values.
boolean | OpenSearch accepts `true` and `false` as boolean values. An empty string is equal to `false.`
float | A single-precision 32-bit floating point number.
double | A double-precision 64-bit floating point number.
integer | A signed 32-bit number.
object | Objects are standard JSON objects, which can have fields and mappings of their own. For example, a `movies` object can have additional properties such as `title`, `year`, and `director`.
array | Arrays in OpenSearch can only store values of one type, such as an array of just integers or strings. Empty arrays are treated as though they are fields with no values.
text | A string sequence of characters that represent full-text values.
date detection string | Enabled by default, if new string fields match a date's format, then the string is processed as a `date` field. For example, `date: "2012/03/11"` is processed as a date.
numeric detection string | If disabled, OpenSearch may automatically process numeric values as strings when they should be processed as numbers. When enabled, OpenSearch can process strings into `long`, `integer`, `short`, `byte`, `double`, `float`, `half_float`, `scaled_float`, and `unsigned_long`. Default is disabled.
The following example shows how to create a mapping to specify that OpenSearch should ignore any documents with malformed IP addresses that do not conform to the [`ip`]({{site.url}}{{site.baseurl}}/opensearch/supported-field-types/ip/) data type. You accomplish this by setting the `ignore_malformed` parameter to `true`.