Elasticsearch High-level Rest Client: BulkRequest not retaining value outside of For loop

Question

I am trying to use an Elasticsearch BulkRequest. I believe I am having some sort of scope issue, which I cannot for the life of me understand.

public void saveAll(Map<I, T> saveRequestMap) {
        BulkRequest request = new BulkRequest();

        for(Map.Entry<I, T> document : saveRequestMap.entrySet()) {
                request.add(indexRequest(document.getKey(), document.getValue()));
                // request.size() here shows the correct number of items
        }

        // request.size() here always shows 0 items (should show 50 if 50 items were added above)
        BulkResponse response = client.bulk(request, DEFAULT_REQUEST_OPTIONS());

}

protected final IndexRequest indexRequest(I id, T entity) {
        return new IndexRequest(indexName)
                        .id(id.toString())
                        .source(mapEntityToJsonString(entity), XContentType.JSON);
}

private mapEntityToJson(T entity) {
        String jsonObject = mapper.toJsonString(entity);
        log.trace("mapped object: {}", jsonOBject);

        return jsonObject;
}

If I have 50 items being bulk-indexed, it will fail because Elasticsearch claims there are 0 items. I soon realized that request.add() is not working like I thought it should and the request is losing all IndexRequests created in the for loop.

If I change the code to this, it is able to index properly:

public void saveAll(Map<I, T> saveRequestMap) {
        BulkRequest request = new BulkRequest();
        int count = 0;

        for(Map.Entry<I, T> document : saveRequestMap.entrySet()) {
                request.add(indexRequest(document.getKey(), document.getValue()));
                // request.size() here shows the correct number of items
                count++;

                if(count == saveRequestMap.size()) {
                        // request.size() here shows the correct number of items (e.g. 50)
                        BulkResponse response = client.bulk(request, DEFAULT_REQUEST_OPTIONS());
                }
        }
}

protected final IndexRequest indexRequest(I id, T entity) {
        return new IndexRequest(indexName)
                        .id(id.toString())
                        .source(mapEntityToJsonString(entity), XContentType.JSON);
}

private mapEntityToJson(T entity) {
        String jsonObject = mapper.toJsonString(entity);
        log.trace("mapped object: {}", jsonOBject);

        return jsonObject;
}

So the question I have:

• Why does request not retain the objects added to it outside of the for loop, even though it was declared outside of the loop?

I have looked at several posts here at SO and haven't found anything that really helps me understand or hint at whats going on.

Thank you!