Nested Json logs - how to filter correctly

Elastic Stack Logstash
1

Hi,

I'm trying to input a complex Json log with nested fields. Here is my .conf file:

input { file { path => /home/logstash-user/json-try.json" start_position => "beginning" codec => "json" } } output { elasticsearch { codec => "json"} stdout { codec => "rubydebug"} }

I tried to input to files, one simple with 1 nested object, and another one more complex with about 3 nested objects.

The first file is filtered correctly, but the second one isn't filtered at all, and the following error appears:
"Attempted to send a bulk request to Elasticsearch .... but an error occurred and it failed!" and so on...

What is my problem?

2

The elasticsearch output should not have JSON codec as this is handled internally. Remove this and try again.

3

Hi, thank you for your replay. I removed the JSON codec from the elasticsearch output, but nothing changed.

Here is the input that worked:
{"one":{"id":1, "name":"john", "job":"programmer"}, "two":{"id":2, "name":"david", "job":"programmer"}}

Here is the complex input that didn't work:
{"project":{"metadata":{"project_name":"calc", "date":"01.01.16"}, "details":{"feature 1":{"name":"gui", "description":"design"}, "feature 2":"modulo", "description":"modulo"}}}}

What might be the problem?

4

The last entry seems to have a curly brace too many at the end and is therefore nat valid JSON.

5

thanks, I fixed it. But now it doesn't parse the json, it just puts the whole input into the "message" field, instead of parsing it by the json objects.

6

Do you still have got the JSON codec for the file input? Can you share you current config?

7

input { file { path => /home/logstash-user/json-try.json" start_position => "beginning" codec => "json" } } output { elasticsearch { } stdout { codec => "rubydebug"} }

8

What does the ruby debug output look like for the event?

9

Logstash startup completed
{
"message" => "{"project":{"metadata":{"project_name":"calc", "date":"01.01.16"}, "details":{"feature 1":{"name":"gui", "description":"design"}, "feature 2":"modulo", "description":"modulo"}}}",
"tags" => [
[0] "_jsonparsefailure"
],
"@version" => "1",
"timestamp" => "2016-03-24T08:32:50.667Z",
"host" => "elk"
"path" => "/home/logstash-user/json-try.json"
}

10

That can not be parsed by the codec as it is not valid JSON (indicated by the _jsonparsefailure tag). If you can not correct the generation at the source, you may need to load it using a plain codec and then transform it into valid JSON before applying a JSON filter instead.

11

I put the json into a json validator, had a minor fix in it.
Now I get a huge error in red and yellow, the same one I wrote about in the beginning. It looks something like this:
"Attempted to send bulk request to Elasticsearch configured at (configuration details...) but an error occurred and it failed!" and so on, it's pretty long...
The same error is printed about 4 times.

12

Hi Christian,
In my searches around the web I found someone saying they had a problem to filter input with dots (".") in it, and in one of the inputs I indeed had a dot. I removed it and everything worked fine. Do you know the cause of this problem? Or how to overcome it?

Thanks