How To Capture Java Application Client Side Log

Elastic Stack Beats
1

We have a client side application for windows and mac. Our customers install and run them on different Mac and Windows machine. Currently, we are collecting application and user interaction logs in a log file into client machine as application data.

Now we want to collect and analyze all the different client side logs into a centralized system. Please note that user may be disconnected from Internet from time to time.

Please note that we have an installer to install our client application so we don't want our user to install and any elastic stack element on their own. Can we use filebeat or any of the required elements as embedded into our java application or as a jar.

Please let me know how can we solve this problem using elastic stack.

2

Filebeat is a executable binary built from Golang. The binary built is specific to the platform (OS X, Windows, ...). As far as I know you can package almost anything into a jar file. So you could also add filebeat with configs into this. But you would have to extract it on the client machine and execute it then. TBH this sounds quite hacky.

A better way sounds for me to make it part of the installer.

Also the disconnected nature should work for filebeat, as it keeps the state and will continue sending data the next time the elasticsearch / logstash server is available again.