CreateIndex-阿里云帮助中心

Use this API to create two types of knowledge bases: unstructured knowledge bases for documents, audio, or video, and structured knowledge bases for data queries or image Q&A.

Operation description

Permissions:
- RAM user: A RAM user must obtain the required API permissions for Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and join a workspace before calling this operation. You can use the AliyunBailianDataFullAccess policy, which includes the sfm:CreateIndex permission required for this operation.
- Alibaba Cloud account: By default, Alibaba Cloud accounts have the required permissions and can call this operation directly.
How to call: Use the latest version of the to call this operation. The SDK handles the complex signature calculation logic to simplify the process.
What to do next: This operation only initializes a knowledge base creation job. After calling this operation, you must call the SubmitIndexJob operation to complete the creation. Otherwise, an empty knowledge base is created. For related code examples, see Knowledge base API guide.
Idempotence: This operation is not idempotent. Repeated calls may create multiple knowledge bases with the same name. To ensure idempotence, query for the knowledge base before you create it.

Rate limiting: Frequent calls to this operation are subject to rate limiting. Do not exceed a frequency of 10 calls per second. If you encounter rate limiting, retry the call later.

Try it now

Try this API in OpenAPI Explorer, no manual signing needed. Successful calls auto-generate SDK code matching your parameters. Download it with built-in credential security for local usage.

RAM authorization

The table below describes the authorization required to call this API. You can define it in a Resource Access Management (RAM) policy. The table's columns are detailed below:

Action: The actions can be used in the Action element of RAM permission policy statements to grant permissions to perform the operation.
API: The API that you can call to perform the action.
Access level: The predefined level of access granted for each API. Valid values: create, list, get, update, and delete.
Resource type: The type of the resource that supports authorization to perform the action. It indicates if the action supports resource-level permission. The specified resource must be compatible with the action. Otherwise, the policy will be ineffective.
- For APIs with resource-level permissions, required resource types are marked with an asterisk (*). Specify the corresponding Alibaba Cloud Resource Name (ARN) in the Resource element of the policy.
- For APIs without resource-level permissions, it is shown as All Resources. Use an asterisk (*) in the Resource element of the policy.
Condition key: The condition keys defined by the service. The key allows for granular control, applying to either actions alone or actions associated with specific resources. In addition to service-specific condition keys, Alibaba Cloud provides a set of common condition keys applicable across all RAM-supported services.
Dependent action: The dependent actions required to run the action. To complete the action, the RAM user or the RAM role must have the permissions to perform all dependent actions.

Action	Access level	Resource type	Condition key	Dependent action
sfm:CreateIndex	create	All Resource ``	None	None

Action

Access level

Resource type

Condition key

Dependent action

sfm:CreateIndex

create

*All Resource

*

None

Request syntax

POST /{WorkspaceId}/index/create HTTP/1.1

Path Parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description	Example
WorkspaceId	string	Yes	The ID of the workspace where you want to create the knowledge base. For more information about how to obtain the workspace ID, see How to use workspaces.	llm-3z7uw7fwz0vexxxx

Request parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description	Example
Name	string	Yes	The name of the knowledge base. The name can be 1 to 20 characters in length and can contain Chinese characters, letters, digits, underscores (_), hyphens (-), periods (.), and colons (:).	Enterprise doc lib
StructureType	string	Yes	The type of the knowledge base. Valid values: unstructured: A knowledge base for document search, audio, or video. The default scenario for document search is basic document Q&A. structured: A knowledge base for data query or image Q&A. The type of a knowledge base cannot be changed after it is created. Valid values: unstructured : unstructured	unstructured
EmbeddingModelName	string	No	The vector model used by the knowledge base. A vector model converts the original input prompt and knowledge text into numerical vectors to compare their similarity. The text-embedding-v4 model is a comprehensive upgrade over the text-embedding-v3 model in terms of language support, vectorization of code snippets, and vector dimension selection. It is suitable for most scenarios. For more information, see Vectorization. Valid values: text-embedding-v4 text-embedding-v3 If you do not specify this parameter, `text-embedding-v3` is used.	text-embedding-v2
RerankModelName	string	No	The reranking model used by the knowledge base. The reranking model is an external scoring system that calculates a similarity score between the user's question and each text chunk in the knowledge base, sorts them in descending order, and returns the top K text chunks. Valid values: qwen3-rerank-hybrid: qwen3-rerank (hybrid) reranking. qwen3-rerank: qwen3-rerank reranking. gte-rerank-hybrid: gte-rerank (hybrid) reranking. gte-rerank: gte-rerank reranking. If you do not specify this parameter, `qwen3-rerank` is used. Use `qwen3-rerank` if you only need semantic sorting. Use `qwen3-rerank-hybrid` if you need both semantic sorting and text-matching features to ensure relevance. The `gte-rerank-hybrid` and `gte-rerank` models are no longer updated and are not recommended. Valid values: gte-rerank-hybrid : Official reranking gte-rerank : gte-rerank reranking	gte-rerank-hybrid
RerankMinScore	number	No	The similarity threshold. Only text chunks with a similarity score greater than this value are recalled. This is used to filter the text chunks returned by the reranking model. The value must be between 0.01 and 1.00. If you do not specify this parameter, the default value 0.01 is used.	0.20
ChunkSize	integer	No	The chunk size, which is the maximum number of characters for each text chunk. If this length is exceeded: Smart chunking (the `chunkMode` parameter is not specified): The text is likely to be truncated. Custom chunking (the `chunkMode` parameter is specified): The text is forcibly truncated. The value must be between 1 and 6000. If you do not specify this parameter, the default value 500 is used. If you set `ChunkSize` to a value less than 100, you must also set `OverlapSize`. You can also leave both parameters unspecified, and the system will use the default values.	128
OverlapSize	integer	No	The overlap size, which is the number of overlapping characters between the current text chunk and the previous one. The value must be between 0 and 1024. If you do not specify this parameter, the default value 100 is used. `OverlapSize` must be smaller than `ChunkSize`. Otherwise, chunking errors will occur.	16
Separator	string	No	The sentence separator. This parameter takes effect only when `chunkMode` is set to regex. It is ignored in other modes, even if specified. You can enter a regular expression (multiple expressions are not supported) to split the file into smaller text chunks. For smart chunking (the `chunkMode` parameter is not specified), you can leave this parameter empty.	(?<=。)
SourceType	string	No	In the latest SDK version, this parameter is required. Otherwise, calling the SubmitIndexJob operation will result in the error: Required parameter(data_sources) missing or invalid. The source of the imported data. Valid values: DATA_CENTER_CATEGORY: Category type. Imports all files under the specified categories in . You can import multiple categories at the same time. DATA_CENTER_FILE: File type. Imports the specified files from . You can import multiple files at the same time. If you set this parameter to DATA_CENTER_CATEGORY, you must specify the `CategoryIds` parameter. If you set this parameter to DATA_CENTER_FILE, you must specify the `DocumentIds` parameter. To create an empty knowledge base, use an empty category that contains no files. Set this parameter to DATA_CENTER_CATEGORY and specify the ID of the empty category for `CategoryIds`. Valid values: DATA_CENTER_CATEGORY : Category type DATA_CENTER_FILE : File type	DATA_CENTER_FILE
DocumentIds	array	No	You can import files when you create a knowledge base. Specify a list of files to import by providing their IDs. We recommend importing no more than 10,000 files. If you have more files, you can call the SubmitIndexAddDocumentsJob operation to import them later.
	string	No	The file ID. This is the `FileId` returned by the AddFile operation. You can also obtain the ID by clicking the ID icon next to the file name in the file connector under Data Connectors or on the Files tab of .	file_9a65732555b54d5ea10796ca5742ba22_xxxxxxxx
CategoryIds	array	No	You can import files when you create a knowledge base. Specify category IDs to import all files under the corresponding categories. We recommend importing no more than 10,000 files. If you have more files, you can call the SubmitIndexAddDocumentsJob operation to import them later.
	string	No	The category ID. This is the `CategoryId` returned by the AddCategory operation. You can also obtain it on the Files tab of by clicking the ID icon next to the category name.	ca_hiu2383nfxxxx
TableIds	array	No	Obtain the table ID on the Tables tab of the table connector in Data Connections by clicking the ID icon next to the table name. If the list contains multiple IDs, only the first one is used.
	string	No
SinkType	string	Yes	The storage class for the knowledge base vectors. For more information, see Knowledge bases. Valid values: BUILT_IN: Hosts the vector data on the Alibaba Cloud Model Studio platform. ADB: AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL. We recommend choosing ADB if you need advanced features such as database management, auditing, and monitoring. If you have not used ADB storage on Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, go to the page, set the vector storage class to ADB-PG, and follow the on-screen instructions to grant the required permissions. If you set this parameter to ADB, you must specify the `SinkInstanceId` and `SinkRegion` parameters. Valid values: BUILT_IN : BUILT_IN ADB : ADB	BUILT_IN
SinkInstanceId	string	No	The ID of the AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL instance. This parameter is required only when `SinkType` is set to ADB. Go to the AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL instance list page to obtain this ID.	gp-bp32109xxxx
SinkRegion	string	No	The region where the AnalyticDB for PostgreSQL instance is located. This parameter is required only when `SinkType` is set to ADB. You can call the operation to obtain a list of regions.	cn-hangzhou
Columns	array<object>	No	The structure of the data table (column names, types, etc.).
	object	No	This parameter is not yet available. Do not specify it.
Column	string	No	This parameter is not yet available. Do not specify it.	school
IsRecall	boolean	No	Specifies whether to participate in model response generation. If enabled, the retrieval results from this column are used as input for the LLM to generate an answer. Valid values: true: Enabled. false: Disabled.	true
IsSearch	boolean	No	Specifies whether to participate in knowledge base retrieval. If enabled, the knowledge base is allowed to search for data in this column. Valid values: true: Enabled. false: Disabled.	true
Name	string	No	The field name. It must be consistent with the table header of the data table created in Application Data.	School
Type	string	No	The field type. It must be consistent with the table header of the data table created in Application Data. Valid values: string double long datetime image_url	string
Description	string	No	The description of the knowledge base. The description can be 0 to 1,000 English or Chinese characters in length. The default value is empty.	Enterprise doc lib includes important materials
metaExtractColumns	array<object>	No	The metadata extraction configuration. Metadata is a series of additional attributes related to unstructured data content. These attributes are integrated into text chunks as key-value pairs. For more information, see Knowledge bases.
	object	No
Key	string	No	The metadata field. The field name can be 1 to 50 characters in length and must consist of letters or underscores. If you specify this parameter, you must also specify the `Value` and `Type` parameters.	author
Value	string	No	The value of the metadata field.	Tim
Type	string	No	The method for obtaining the value of the metadata field. Valid values: constant: Constant. variable: Variable. custom_prompt: Large Language Model (LLM). regular: Regular expression. keywords: Keyword search. Valid values: constant : Constant extraction keywords : Keyword extraction custom_prompt : Large Language Model variable : Variable extraction regular : Regular expression	constant
Desc	string	No	The Chinese description of the metadata field. The description can be 0 to 1,000 characters in length and can contain Chinese characters, letters, digits, underscores (_), hyphens (-), periods (.), and colons (:). The default value is empty.	Author name
EnableLlm	boolean	No	If enabled, the metadata field and its value are used along with the text chunk content in the answer generation process of the LLM. Valid values: true: Enabled. false: Disabled. The default value is false. Valid values: true : Enabled false : Disabled	false
EnableSearch	boolean	No	If enabled, the metadata field and its value are used along with the text chunk content in the knowledge base retrieval process. Valid values: true: Enabled. false: Disabled. The default value is false. Valid values: true : Enabled false : Disabled	false
enableHeaders	boolean	No	Specifies whether to treat the first row of all .xlsx and .xls files as the table header and append it to each text chunk. This prevents the LLM from treating the header as a regular data row. We recommend enabling this feature only when all imported files are in .xlsx or .xls format and contain a header. Otherwise, do not enable it. Valid values: true: Enabled. false: Disabled. If you do not specify this parameter, this feature is disabled by default. Valid values: true : Enabled false : Disabled	false
chunkMode	string	No	Enables custom chunking and specifies the chunking policy. For more information, see Knowledge bases. Possible values (only one value can be specified at a time): length: Chunks by length. The text is strictly chunked according to the `ChunkSize` and `OverlapSize` you specify. If you do not specify these two parameters, the system uses the default values (`ChunkSize` is 500, `OverlapSize` is 100). Chunking by length does not support `Separator` (it is ignored even if specified). page: Chunks by page. If `ChunkSize` is specified, it is also considered during chunking (if not specified, the default value 500 is used). Chunking by page does not support `OverlapSize` or `Separator` (they are ignored even if specified). h1: Chunks by level-1 heading. If `ChunkSize` is specified, it is also considered during chunking (if not specified, the default value 500 is used). Chunking by level-1 heading does not support `OverlapSize` or `Separator` (they are ignored even if specified). h2: Chunks by level-2 heading. If `ChunkSize` is specified, it is also considered during chunking (if not specified, the default value 500 is used). Chunking by level-2 heading does not support `OverlapSize` or `Separator` (they are ignored even if specified). regex: Chunks by regular expression. You must specify the `Separator` parameter. If `ChunkSize` is specified, it is also considered during chunking (if not specified, the default value 500 is used). Chunking by regular expression does not support `OverlapSize` (it is ignored even if specified). If you do not specify this parameter, smart chunking is used by default. Valid values: regex : Chunk by regular expression length : Chunk by length h1 : Chunk by level-1 heading h2 : Chunk by level-2 heading page : Chunk by page	regex
EnableRewrite	boolean	No	Specifies whether to enable multi-turn conversation rewriting. Valid values: true: Enabled. false: Disabled. If you do not specify this parameter, this feature is enabled by default. Valid values: true : Enabled false : Disabled	true
CreateIndexType	string	No	This parameter is not yet available. Do not specify it.	standard
pipelineCommercialType	string	No	The edition type of the knowledge base. Valid values: standard: Standard Edition enterprise: Ultimate Edition	standard
pipelineCommercialCu	integer	No	The number of RCUs for the knowledge base. This parameter is required only when `pipelineCommercialType` is set to `enterprise`. The value must be between 1 and 200.	1
pipelineRetrieveRateLimitStrategy	string	No	The rate limiting policy for the knowledge base dependency chain. This parameter is required only when `pipelineCommercialType` is set to `enterprise`. Value: downgrade: Degrades the service (switches to using a lightweight retrieval chain). If you do not specify this parameter, the default value `downgrade` is used.	downgrade
knowledgeType	string	No	The data source code. This parameter is required when creating a data query knowledge base and is used with `table` and `database`. We recommend using the new `connectId` parameter, which you can obtain from the data connector card on the Data Connections page. This parameter is still compatible but will no longer be maintained in the future. This operation does not support associating custom databases. Use the Alibaba Cloud Model Studio console to create them.	document
RerankMode	string	No	The name of the data table. This parameter is required when creating a data query knowledge base. The data table must exist in the data source specified by `connectId` or `datasourceCode`. Valid values: similar: : similar: Similarity mode. custom: : custom: Custom mode. : qa: (Default) Q&A mode.	qa
RerankInstruct	string	No	The name of the database. This parameter is required when creating a data query knowledge base. The database must exist in the data source specified by `datasourceCode`.

Response elements

Element	Type	Description	Example
	object	Schema of Response
Code	string	Error status code	Forbidden
Data	object	The business data returned when the request is successful.
Id	string	The ID of the knowledge base, also known as `IndexId`. This is the unique identifier of the created knowledge base. Keep this value safe. It will be used for all subsequent API operations related to this knowledge base.	jkurxhxxxx
Message	string	Error message	Invalid input, variable name is missing
RequestId	string	Request ID	17204B98-xxxx-4F9A--2446A84821CA
Status	string	The status code returned by the interface.	"200"
Success	boolean	Indicates whether the request was successful. Possible values: true: Successful false: Failed	true

Examples

Success response

JSON format

{
  "Code": "Forbidden",
  "Data": {
    "Id": "jkurxhxxxx"
  },
  "Message": "Invalid input, variable name is missing",
  "RequestId": "17204B98-xxxx-4F9A--2446A84821CA",
  "Status": "\"200\"",
  "Success": true
}

Error codes

See Error Codes for a complete list.

Release notes

See Release Notes for a complete list.