elastic/elasticsearch · error · IllegalArgumentException

Sort direction [{}] not recognized. Valid values are: [asc,

Error message

Sort direction [{}] not recognized. Valid values are: [asc, desc]

What it means

Thrown by SortOrder.fromString when the sort direction string is non-null but does not match either 'asc' or 'desc'. Only those two exact values are accepted.

Source

Thrown at modules/ingest-common/src/main/java/org/elasticsearch/ingest/common/SortProcessor.java:59

            this.direction = direction;
        }

        @Override
        public String toString() {
            return this.direction;
        }

        public static SortOrder fromString(String value) {
            if (value == null) {
                throw new IllegalArgumentException("Sort direction cannot be null");
            }

            if (value.equals(ASCENDING.toString())) {
                return ASCENDING;
            } else if (value.equals(DESCENDING.toString())) {
                return DESCENDING;
            }
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Sort direction [" + value + "] not recognized." + " Valid values are: [asc, desc]");
        }
    }

    private final String field;
    private final SortOrder order;
    private final String targetField;

    SortProcessor(String tag, String description, String field, SortOrder order, String targetField) {
        super(tag, description);
        this.field = field;
        this.order = order;
        this.targetField = targetField;
    }

    String getField() {
        return field;
    }

View on GitHub (pinned to db6a809a66)

Solutions

1. Use exactly 'asc' or 'desc' (lowercase) as the order value.
2. Normalize the input to lowercase 'asc'/'desc' before passing it to the processor.
3. Correct any typo in the order field.

Example fix

// before
{
  "sort": { "field": "events", "target_field": "events_sorted", "order": "ascending" }
}
// after
{
  "sort": { "field": "events", "target_field": "events_sorted", "order": "asc" }
}

// Normalize and validate order before use
String order = config.get("order");
if (order != null) order = order.toLowerCase(Locale.ROOT);
if ("asc".equals(order) || "desc".equals(order) == false) {
    order = "asc"; // or reject
}

boolean isValidSortOrder(String order) {
    return "asc".equals(order) || "desc".equals(order);
}

try {
    SortOrder.fromString(order);
} catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
    if (e.getMessage().contains("not recognized")) {
        // correct to 'asc' or 'desc'
    } else { throw e; }
}

When it happens

Trigger: Configuring the sort processor with an order value other than 'asc' or 'desc' (e.g., 'ascending', 'descending', 'ASC', 'DESC', '1', '0').

Common situations: Using verbose direction names ('ascending'/'descending') instead of short forms. Case sensitivity issues (the check is case-sensitive). Typos. Copy-paste from other tools that use different sort vocabularies.

Related errors

• Sort direction cannot be null
• field [{}] is null, cannot sort.
• failure store document has unexpected structure, missing req
• failure store document has unexpected structure, missing req
• unable to set domain information for document

AI-assisted analysis of elastic/elasticsearch@db6a809a66 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/96fdd28a28497436. Report an issue: GitHub.