# Why Filebeat is not picking up multiline ISO timestamp pattern but picking when pattern is defined manually?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-filebeat-is-not-picking-up-multiline-iso-timestamp-pattern-but-picking-when-pattern-is-defined-manually/255036>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** filebeat\
**Created:** [November 11, 2020, 10:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-filebeat-is-not-picking-up-multiline-iso-timestamp-pattern-but-picking-when-pattern-is-defined-manually/255036 "2020-11-11T10:11:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![elasticheart](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/elasticheart/32/65189_2.png) [@elasticheart](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/elasticheart)\
**Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 10:11am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-filebeat-is-not-picking-up-multiline-iso-timestamp-pattern-but-picking-when-pattern-is-defined-manually/255036/1 "2020-11-11T10:11:17Z")

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Hi,

I have log lines like below;

```
[2020-11-11T11:19:00+05:30] [INFO] [msg1] [msg2] [msg3] [msg4] [msg5] [msg6] [msg7] [msg8] [msg9]

```

The `msg9` attribute may contain multi-line message, so I have decided to configure multi-line pattern in `filebeat.yml` like;

```
multiline.pattern: '^\[%{TIMESTAMP_ISO8601}\] '
multiline.negate: true
multiline.match: after

```

But, this was not working because I was getting all the log lines in a single message. Then, I gave the pattern manually, like below;

```
multiline.pattern: '^\[[[:digit:]]{4}-[[:digit:]]{2}-[[:digit:]]{2}T[[:digit:]]{2}:[[:digit:]]{2}:[[:digit:]]{2}\+[[:digit:]]{2}:[[:digit:]]{2}\]'

```

This worked like charm, and every log line gets out as separate messages. I was just wondering, why the `TIMESTAMP_ISO8601` pattern configuration is not working?

Thanks.

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**Author:** ![Kaiyan\_Sheng](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/kaiyan_sheng/32/38247_2.png) [@Kaiyan\_Sheng](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Kaiyan_Sheng)\
**Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 10:57pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-filebeat-is-not-picking-up-multiline-iso-timestamp-pattern-but-picking-when-pattern-is-defined-manually/255036/2 "2020-11-11T22:57:34Z")

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Hmm by looking at the timestamp example under multiline [documentation](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/filebeat/current/multiline-examples.html#_timestamps), seems like the recommended way is not to use `TIMESTAMP_ISO8601`.  
Here is the example:

```auto
multiline.type: pattern
multiline.pattern: '^\[[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}'
multiline.negate: true
multiline.match: after

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![elasticheart](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/elasticheart/32/65189_2.png) [@elasticheart](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/elasticheart)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2020, 12:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-filebeat-is-not-picking-up-multiline-iso-timestamp-pattern-but-picking-when-pattern-is-defined-manually/255036/3 "2020-11-16T12:17:24Z")

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Thanks @Kaiyan_Sheng 🙂

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<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:** [December 14, 2020, 2:17pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/why-filebeat-is-not-picking-up-multiline-iso-timestamp-pattern-but-picking-when-pattern-is-defined-manually/255036/4 "2020-12-14T14:17:27Z")

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