---
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 APIs (e.g. ListNamespaces). For an initial client request for a list API, if the server cannot return all items in one response, or if there are more items than the `pageSize` specified in the client request, the server must return a `nextPageToken` in the response indicating there are more results available. After the initial request, the value of `nextPageToken` from each response must be used by the client as the `pageToken` parameter value for the next request. Clients must interpret either `null`, missing value or empty string value of `nextPageToken` from a server response as the end of the listing results.

## Request body

- CreateTableIndexRequest
  - `name` string, required — The table name
  - `namespace` string[], required — The namespace identifier
  - `column` string, required — Name of the column to create index on
  - `index_type` 'BTREE' | 'BITMAP' | 'LABEL_LIST' | 'IVF_FLAT' | 'IVF_HNSW_SQ' | 'IVF_PQ' | '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
  - `name` string, required — The table name
  - `namespace` string[], required — The namespace identifier
  - `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

- **2025-07-22** `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)

---

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