Exported Fields: Name

Elastic Stack Beats
1

Hello,
I noticed that the field 'name' is exported as 'type' if set.
E.g.

- name: some-name
  type: http
  urls:
    - www.myurl.com:123

results in a document like

{
...
"up": true,
"type": "some-name"
...
}

However, if no name is set, the type would be http.
I find this quite unintuitive - or is this by design?

BR

2

It's documented here: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/heartbeat/current/configuration-heartbeat-options.html#monitor-name

what's missing in the doc is, if name is not configured, the name setting defaults to the type-setting. That is name is optional (but should be used if multiple monitors of same time are configured).

You finding this unintuitive, how would you like it to work?

3

Hi Steffen,

I am aware of the documentation.
However, in my understanding it's a bit unintuitive that the name field overwrites the type.
I would expect a field name in the result set.
Furthermore, if I want to have the value of name and the type, I would have to parse the monitor field to extract the corresponding type again.

So imho:

Configuration

- name: myname
  type: http
  urls:
    - http://www.myurl.com:123
  ...

should result in

...
{
   "monitor": "$name@$type@$url",
   "name":  "myname",
   "type": "http",
   ...
}

rather than

...
{
   "monitor": "$type@$url",
   "type":  "myname",
   ...
}

BR

4

Thanks. I totally agree with your proposal. Can you open a github issue/enhancement request for heartbeat?

5

Sure, will do within the next few hours.
Thank you.

See issue