# Correct way to drop older events?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/correct-way-to-drop-older-events/131043
**Category:** Logstash
**Created:** [May 8, 2018, 5:09pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/correct-way-to-drop-older-events/131043 "2018-05-08T17:09:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@jonrust](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jonrust)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2018, 5:09pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/correct-way-to-drop-older-events/131043/1 "2018-05-08T17:09:28Z")
I'd like to drop older events at logstash parsing time. Going with 100 days as my cutoff, I tried and failed to do this with the ruby module:
```
ruby {
code => "event.cancel if event.get(@timestamp) < (Time.now - (86400*100))"
}
```
Is there a better way to do it? If not, what did i do wrong in the ruby code?
The error i see from LS is:
> [2018-05-08T13:10:58,506][ERROR][logstash.filters.ruby] Ruby exception occurred: no implicit conversion of nil into String
EDIT:
Better code? At least the errors have stopped.
```
ruby {
code => "event.cancel if event.timestamp.to_i < (Time.now.to_i - (86400*10))"
}
```
---
### Author:  [@magnusbaeck](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/magnusbaeck)
#### Post date: [May 8, 2018, 7:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/correct-way-to-drop-older-events/131043/2 "2018-05-08T19:29:56Z")
The latter looks okay, but consider using the age filter.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2018, 7:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/correct-way-to-drop-older-events/131043/3 "2018-06-05T19:29:59Z")
This topic was automatically closed 28 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.