You can create new indexes with new mappings. I used this to convert logstash mappings from one type to another. I used this reindex plugin for great success. This makes the flow of one index into another much simpler and requires essentially only 2 HTTP requests.
- :
$ curl -XPOST http://elnode:9200/<New Index Name> -d @<new mapping>.json
$ curl -XPUT http://elnode:9200/<New Index Name>/logs/_reindex\?searchIndex=<Old Index Name>\&searchType=logs
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