[[development-elasticsearch]]
=== Communicating with Elasticsearch

Kibana exposes two clients on the server and browser for communicating with elasticsearch.
There is an 'admin' client which is used for managing Kibana's state, and a 'data' client for all
other requests.  The clients use the {client-ref}/javascript-api/current/index.html[elasticsearch.js library].

[float]
[[client-server]]
=== Server clients

Server clients are exposed through the elasticsearch plugin.
[source,javascript]
----
  const adminCluster = server.plugins.elasticsearch.getCluster('admin);
  const dataCluster = server.plugins.elasticsearch.getCluster('data);

  //ping as the configured elasticsearch.user in kibana.yml
  adminCluster.callWithInternalUser('ping');

  //ping as the user specified in the current requests header
  adminCluster.callWithRequest(req, 'ping');
----

[float]
[[client-browser]]
=== Browser clients

Browser clients are exposed through AngularJS services.

[source,javascript]
----
uiModules.get('kibana')
.run(function (es) {
  es.ping()
  .catch(err => {
    console.log('error pinging servers');
  });
});
----