How to connect to AWS ElasticSearch using npm elasticsearch and http-aws-es? - node.js

Question

I am using the npm elasticsearch package to search my AWS ES domain. Everything seems to work fine when I use Postman to make POST requests with my AWS IAM credentials.
I wanted to do the same in my code (node.js). I referred to this answer here:
How to make calls to elasticsearch apis through NodeJS?
Here is code:
const elasticsearch = require('elasticsearch');
const awsHttpClient = require('http-aws-es');
const AWS = require('aws-sdk');
const client = new elasticsearch.Client({
host: 'my-aws-es-endpoint',
connectionClass: awsHttpClient,
amazonES: {
region: 'us-east-1',
credentials: new AWS.Credentials('my-access-key','my-secret-key')
}
});
But when I run client.search(), it fails with an error:
Elasticsearch ERROR: 2018-10-31T15:12:22Z
Error: Request error, retrying
POST https://my-endpoint.us-east-1.es.amazonaws.com/my-index/student/_search => Data must be a string or a buffer
It also gives me a warning
Elasticsearch WARNING: 2018-10-31T15:12:22Z
Unable to revive connection: https://my-endpoint.us-east-1.es.amazonaws.com/
When I use just the aws-sdk, it works fine (probably because I sign the request there?)
Can someone suggest what I am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

I was able to solve this by specifying the region. There is a problem with the elasticsearch client where it's not able to the pick the region which we specify in
amazonES: {
region: 'us-east-1',
credentials: new AWS.Credentials('my-access-key','my-secret-key')
}
}
I solved it by specifying the region using AWS.config.region before the above code
AWS.config.region = 'us-east-1';