---
title: "Create an index on a table"
method: POST
path: "/v1/table/{id}/create_index"
tags: ["Table", "Index", "Metadata"]
---

# Create an index on a table

`POST /v1/table/{id}/create_index`

Create an index on a table column for faster search operations.
Supports vector indexes (IVF_FLAT, IVF_HNSW_SQ, IVF_PQ, etc.) and scalar indexes (BTREE, BITMAP, FTS, etc.).
Index creation is handled asynchronously. 
Use the `ListTableIndices` and `DescribeTableIndexStats` operations to monitor index creation progress.

## Path parameters

- `id` string, required

## Query parameters

- `delimiter` string, nullable — An opaque token that allows pagination for list operations (e.g. ListNamespaces). For an initial request of a list operation, if the implementation cannot return all items in one response, or if there are more items than the page limit specified in the request, the implementation must return a page token in the response, indicating there are more results available. After the initial request, the value of the page token from each response must be used as the page token value for the next request. Caller must interpret either `null`, missing value or empty string value of the page token from the implementation's response as the end of the listing results.

## Request body

- CreateTableIndexRequest
  - `id` string[]
  - `column` string, required — Name of the column to create index on
  - `index_type` 'BTREE' | 'BITMAP' | 'LABEL_LIST' | 'IVF_FLAT' | 'IVF_PQ' | 'IVF_HNSW_SQ' | 'FTS', required — Type of index to create
  - `metric_type` 'l2' | 'cosine' | 'dot', nullable — Distance metric type for vector indexes
  - `with_position` boolean, nullable — Optional FTS parameter for position tracking
  - `base_tokenizer` string, nullable — Optional FTS parameter for base tokenizer
  - `language` string, nullable — Optional FTS parameter for language
  - `max_token_length` integer, nullable — Optional FTS parameter for maximum token length
  - `lower_case` boolean, nullable — Optional FTS parameter for lowercase conversion
  - `stem` boolean, nullable — Optional FTS parameter for stemming
  - `remove_stop_words` boolean, nullable — Optional FTS parameter for stop word removal
  - `ascii_folding` boolean, nullable — Optional FTS parameter for ASCII folding

## Response `200`

Index created successfully

- CreateTableIndexResponse
  - `id` string[]
  - `location` string, required — Table location (usually empty)
  - `properties` unknown

## Other responses

- `400` — Indicates a bad request error. It could be caused by an unexpected request body format or other forms of request validation failure, such as invalid json. Usually serves application/json content, although in some cases simple text/plain content might be returned by the server's middleware.
- `401` — Unauthorized. The request lacks valid authentication credentials for the operation.
- `403` — Forbidden. Authenticated user does not have the necessary permissions.
- `404` — A server-side problem that means can not find the specified resource.
- `503` — The service is not ready to handle the request. The client should wait and retry. The service may additionally send a Retry-After header to indicate when to retry.
- `5XX` — A server-side problem that might not be addressable from the client side. Used for server 5xx errors without more specific documentation in individual routes.

## Changes

- **2025-07-25** `8769f8e36bc4` — 2 breaking, 2 warning, 2 info
  - removed the required property `name` from the response with the `200` status
  - removed the required property `namespace` from the response with the `200` status
  - removed the request property `name`
  - removed the request property `namespace`
  - …2 more
- **2025-07-22** `ac7519693c52` — 3 info
  - api tag `Index` added
  - added the new optional `query` request parameter `delimiter` to all path's operations
  - added the new optional `query` request parameter `delimiter`
- **2025-07-21** `db7569410aa4` — 2 info
  - api operation id `CreateIndex` removed and replaced with `CreateTableIndex`
  - api tag `Metadata` added
- **2025-07-21** `6790486d1fac` — 10 breaking, 20 warning, 34 info
  - added the new required request property `namespace`
  - request property `index_type` was restricted to a list of enum values
  - the request property `name` became not nullable
  - the request property `name` became required
  - …60 more

[Change history](https://skmtc.dev/lance-format/apis/lance-namespace-specification/changes/v1/table/:id/create_index/post.md)

---

[API](https://skmtc.dev/lance-format/apis/lance-namespace-specification.md) · [All operations](https://skmtc.dev/lance-format/apis/lance-namespace-specification/llms.txt) · [OpenAPI document](https://skmtc-service-production.skmtc.workers.dev/v1/apis/lance-format/lance-namespace-specification/revisions/8769f8e36bc4/schema)