Sending json format log to kibana using filebeat, logstash and elasticsearch?

Question

I have logs like this:

{"logId":"57aaf6c8d32fb","clientIp":"127.0.0.1","time":"03:11:29 pm","uniqueSubId":"57aaf6c98963b","channelName":"JSPC","apiVersion":"v1","modulName":null,"actionName":"apiRequest","typeOfError":"","statusCode":"","message":"In Auth","exception":"In Auth","logType":"Info"}

{"logId":"57aaf6c8d32fb","clientIp":"127.0.0.1","time":"03:11:29 pm","uniqueSubId":"57aaf6c987206","channelName":"JSPC","apiVersion":"v2","modulName":null,"actionName":"performV2","typeOfError":"","statusCode":"","message":"in inbox api v2 5","exception":"in inbox api v2 5","logType":"Info"}

I want to push them to kibana. I am using filebeat to send data to logstash, using following configuration:

filebeat.yml

 ### Logstash as output
logstash:
# The Logstash hosts
hosts: ["localhost:5044"]

# Number of workers per Logstash host.
#worker: 1

Now using following configuration, I want to change codec type:

input {

     beats {
     port => 5000
     tags => "beats"
     codec => "json_lines"
     #ssl  => true
     #ssl_certificate => "/opt/filebeats/logs.example.com.crt"
     #ssl_key => "/opt/filebeats/logs.example.com.key"
     }


     syslog {
        type => "syslog"
        port => "5514"

    }

}

But, still I get the logs in string format:

"message": "{\"logId\":\"57aaf6c96224b\",\"clientIp\":\"127.0.0.1\",\"time\":\"03:11:29 pm\",\"channelName\":\"JSPC\",\"apiVersion\":null,\"modulName\":null,\"actionName\":\"404\",\"typeOfError\":\"EXCEPTION\",\"statusCode\":0,\"message\":\"404 page encountered http:\/\/localjs.com\/uploads\/NonScreenedImages\/profilePic120\/16\/29\/15997002iicee52ad041fed55e952d4e4e163d5972ii4c41f8845105429abbd11cc184d0e330.jpeg\",\"logType\":\"Error\"}",

Please help me solve this.

Answer 1

To parse JSON log lines in Logstash that were sent from Filebeat you need to use a json filter instead of a codec. This is because Filebeat sends its data as JSON and the contents of your log line are contained in the message field.

Logstash config:

input {
  beats {
    port => 5044
  }   
}   

filter {
  if [tags][json] {
    json {
      source => "message"
    }   
  }   
}   

output {
  stdout { codec => rubydebug { metadata => true } } 
}

Filebeat config:

filebeat:
  prospectors:
    - paths:
        - my_json.log
      fields_under_root: true
      fields:
        tags: ['json']
output:
  logstash:
    hosts: ['localhost:5044']

In the Filebeat config, I added a "json" tag to the event so that the json filter can be conditionally applied to the data.

Filebeat 5.0 is able to parse the JSON without the use of Logstash, but it is still an alpha release at the moment. This blog post titled Structured logging with Filebeat demonstrates how to parse JSON with Filebeat 5.0.