JSON Parser

The JSON parser is the simplest option: if the original log source is a JSON map string, it will take it structure and convert it directly to the internal binary representation.

A simple configuration that can be found in the default parsers configuration file, is the entry to parse Docker log files (when the tail input plugin is used):

  1. [PARSER]
  2.     Name        docker
  3.     Format      json
  4.     Time_Key    time
  5.     Time_Format %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S %z

The following log entry is a valid content for the parser defined above:

  1. {"key1": 12345, "key2": "abc", "time": "2006-07-28T13:22:04Z"}

After processing, it internal representation will be:

  1. [1154103724, {"key1"=>12345, "key2"=>"abc"}]

The time has been converted to Unix timestamp (UTC) and the map reduced to each component of the original message.