Nested fields as the grok match input

[jbrowe]

I am trying to parse ADFS authentication logs from a winlogbeat data stream. My winlogbeat pre-parses these logs by putting everything unrecognized into fields event_data.param1, event_data.param2, etc, which are not meaningful. I'm using a grok filter in Logstash to create meaningful fields in my final index. I have ADFS documents with the following event_data.param3 field pre-parsed by winlogbeat:

event_data.param3: "jsmith@example.com-The referenced account is currently locked out and may not be logged on to"

My grok filter configuration, which works for all messages in the debugger, looks like:

grok {
     match => {
          [event_data][param3] => [
                 "^%{GREEDYDATA:user_name}-%{GREEDYDATA:reason}"
          ]
     }
}

I get no resulting user_name or reason fields in my index from this configuration and no errors in the logstash logs.

Then I tried to eliminate the nested event_data.param3 reference using the following:

mutate {
       add_field => {
            "test_string" => "%{[event_data][param3]}"
       }
}
grok {
     match => {
          test_string => [
                 "^%{GREEDYDATA:user_name}-%{GREEDYDATA:reason}"
          ]
     }
}

This works fine. Any clues how I should add nested field names as the string to match in grok?

[Badger]

@jbrowe

grok { match => { [event_data][param3] => [ "^%{GREEDYDATA:user_name}-%{GREEDYDATA:reason}" ] } }

I am surprised you do not get a syntax error for this one. Instead of

grok { match => { [event_data][param3] => [ "^%{GREEDYDATA:user_name}-%{GREEDYDATA:reason}" ] } }

try

grok { match => { "[event_data][param3]" => [ "^%{GREEDYDATA:user_name}-%{GREEDYDATA:reason}" ] } }

[jbrowe]

That worked. Thanks. I regularly use:

if [event_data][param3] {
   ...
}

instead of:

if "[event_data][param3]" {
...
}

and it works fine.

[Badger]

I would expect

if [event_data][param3] {

to work and be surprised if

if "[event_data][param3]" {

worked. I cannot explain which works where. I guess I have just acclimated to the syntax.