---
title: Guide: Using Vector Store Index with Existing Weaviate Vector Store
 | LlamaIndex OSS Documentation
---

If you’re opening this Notebook on colab, you will probably need to install LlamaIndex 🦙.

```
%pip install llama-index-vector-stores-weaviate
%pip install llama-index-embeddings-openai
```

```
!pip install llama-index
```

```
import weaviate
```

```
client = weaviate.Client("https://test-cluster-bbn8vqsn.weaviate.network")
```

## Prepare Sample “Existing” Weaviate Vector Store

### Define schema

We create a schema for “Book” class, with 4 properties: title (str), author (str), content (str), and year (int)

```
try:
    client.schema.delete_class("Book")
except:
    pass
```

```
schema = {
    "classes": [
        {
            "class": "Book",
            "properties": [
                {"name": "title", "dataType": ["text"]},
                {"name": "author", "dataType": ["text"]},
                {"name": "content", "dataType": ["text"]},
                {"name": "year", "dataType": ["int"]},
            ],
        },
    ]
}


if not client.schema.contains(schema):
    client.schema.create(schema)
```

### Define sample data

We create 4 sample books

```
books = [
    {
        "title": "To Kill a Mockingbird",
        "author": "Harper Lee",
        "content": (
            "To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in"
            " 1960..."
        ),
        "year": 1960,
    },
    {
        "title": "1984",
        "author": "George Orwell",
        "content": (
            "1984 is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949..."
        ),
        "year": 1949,
    },
    {
        "title": "The Great Gatsby",
        "author": "F. Scott Fitzgerald",
        "content": (
            "The Great Gatsby is a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald published in"
            " 1925..."
        ),
        "year": 1925,
    },
    {
        "title": "Pride and Prejudice",
        "author": "Jane Austen",
        "content": (
            "Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen published in"
            " 1813..."
        ),
        "year": 1813,
    },
]
```

### Add data

We add the sample books to our Weaviate “Book” class (with embedding of content field

```
from llama_index.embeddings.openai import OpenAIEmbedding


embed_model = OpenAIEmbedding()
```

```
with client.batch as batch:
    for book in books:
        vector = embed_model.get_text_embedding(book["content"])
        batch.add_data_object(
            data_object=book, class_name="Book", vector=vector
        )
```

## Query Against “Existing” Weaviate Vector Store

```
from llama_index.vector_stores.weaviate import WeaviateVectorStore
from llama_index.core import VectorStoreIndex
from llama_index.core.response.pprint_utils import pprint_source_node
```

You must properly specify a “index\_name” that matches the desired Weaviate class and select a class property as the “text” field.

```
vector_store = WeaviateVectorStore(
    weaviate_client=client, index_name="Book", text_key="content"
)
```

```
retriever = VectorStoreIndex.from_vector_store(vector_store).as_retriever(
    similarity_top_k=1
)
```

```
nodes = retriever.retrieve("What is that book about a bird again?")
```

Let’s inspect the retrieved node. We can see that the book data is loaded as LlamaIndex `Node` objects, with the “content” field as the main text.

```
pprint_source_node(nodes[0])
```

```
Document ID: cf927ce7-0672-4696-8aae-7e77b33b9659
Similarity: None
Text: author: Harper Lee title: To Kill a Mockingbird year: 1960  To
Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960......
```

The remaining fields should be loaded as metadata (in `metadata`)

```
nodes[0].node.metadata
```

```
{'author': 'Harper Lee', 'title': 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'year': 1960}
```