# Logstash JSON parser error

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/logstash-json-parser-error/57412>\
**Category:** Logstash\
**Created:** [August 7, 2016, 3:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/logstash-json-parser-error/57412 "2016-08-07T03:22:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![elssar](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/elssar/32/9216_2.png) [@elssar](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/elssar)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2016, 3:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/logstash-json-parser-error/57412/1 "2016-08-07T03:22:54Z")

</div>

My logs are full of this one particular error - `exception=>#<LogStash::Json::ParserError: Invalid UTF-8 middle byte 0x54 at [Source: [B@49854dd9; line: 1, column: 302]>, :level=>:warn}`

I checked the message, it is valid JSON.

Could is be some encoding problem?

The original message is a base64 string which I decode using the ruby filter

```auto
ruby {
    code => "require 'base64'; event['message'] = Base64.decode64(event['message'])"
}

```

Could I be messing up the encoding somewhere here?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/christian_dahlqvist/32/4617_2.png) [@Christian\_Dahlqvist](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Christian_Dahlqvist)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2016, 9:35am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/logstash-json-parser-error/57412/2 "2016-08-07T09:35:16Z")

</div>

What does the extracted message look like? What does your configuration look like?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 4:44am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/logstash-json-parser-error/57412/3 "2017-07-06T04:44:25Z")

</div>