# Convert string to array in logstash
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/convert-string-to-array-in-logstash/166321
**Category:** Logstash
**Created:** [January 30, 2019, 9:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/convert-string-to-array-in-logstash/166321 "2019-01-30T09:33:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@BlueSpirit](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/BlueSpirit)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2019, 9:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/convert-string-to-array-in-logstash/166321/1 "2019-01-30T09:33:56Z")
My original data.
```
{
message: {
data: "["1,2","3,4","5,6"]"
}
}
```
Now I want to convert value of data field to an array.
So it should become:
```
{
message: {
data: ["1,2", "3,4", "5,6"]
}
}
```
By using
```
mutate {
gsub => ["data", "[\[\]]", ""]
}
```
I got rid of square brackets.
After this, I tried splitting based on commas. But that won't work. Since my data has commas as well.
I tried writing a [dissect block](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/6.6/plugins-filters-dissect.html) but that is not useful.
So how should I go ahead with this?
---
### Author:  [@Badger](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Badger)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2019, 1:48pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/convert-string-to-array-in-logstash/166321/2 "2019-01-30T13:48:23Z")
> [@BlueSpirit](#):
>
> { data: "["1,2","3,4","5,6"]" }
Transform "," into a character that you can split on?
```
mutate { gsub => ["data", '","', '|', "data", '^\["', "", "data", '"]$', "" ] }
mutate { split => { "data" => '|' } }
```
---
### Author:  [@BlueSpirit](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/BlueSpirit)
#### Post date: [January 31, 2019, 7:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/convert-string-to-array-in-logstash/166321/3 "2019-01-31T07:02:02Z")
Nice approach.
Although, I fixed it by using
```
json{
source => "message"
}
json {
source => "data"
target => "data"
}
```
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 28, 2019, 7:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/convert-string-to-array-in-logstash/166321/4 "2019-02-28T07:02:03Z")
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