# Date in logstash input

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/date-in-logstash-input/136699>\
**Category:** Logstash\
**Created:** [June 20, 2018, 1:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/date-in-logstash-input/136699 "2018-06-20T13:22:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kpover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/edb3f5/32.png) [@kpover](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kpover)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2018, 1:22pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/date-in-logstash-input/136699/1 "2018-06-20T13:22:11Z")

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Hi, apologies if this has been asked before.

I have logstash pulling the full contents of an index from elastic on a daily basis. In elastic a new index is created every day that contains that days data, it's called index-YYYY-MM-DD.

Basically my question is how do I get logstash to enter todays date into the index name? My input code is:

input {  
elasticsearch {  
hosts =\> "localhost:9200"  
index =\> "index-%{+YYYY-MM-DD}"  
query =\> '{"query" : {"match\_all" : {} } }'  
}  
}

Thanks in advance

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**Author:** ![magnusbaeck](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/magnusbaeck/32/44943_2.png) [@magnusbaeck](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/magnusbaeck)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2018, 1:52pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/date-in-logstash-input/136699/2 "2018-06-20T13:52:38Z")

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Is Logstash running in the background all the time or are you starting it every day to perform this action?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![kpover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/edb3f5/32.png) [@kpover](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/kpover)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2018, 1:58pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/date-in-logstash-input/136699/3 "2018-06-20T13:58:31Z")

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At the moment I'm just testing so running it manually, I hope to have it running as a service with a CRON job to pull the data daily once I've got it working

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![magnusbaeck](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/magnusbaeck/32/44943_2.png) [@magnusbaeck](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/magnusbaeck)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2018, 2:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/date-in-logstash-input/136699/4 "2018-06-20T14:08:19Z")

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Well, either way it's not running continuously so you can set an environment variable to today's date and reference that variable in your configuration via the `${VARIABLE_NAME}` notation.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 18, 2018, 2:08pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/date-in-logstash-input/136699/5 "2018-07-18T14:08:26Z")

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