generator

Milestone: 3

Generate random log events.

The general intention of this is to test performance of plugins.

An event is generated first

Synopsis

This is what it might look like in your config file:
input {
  generator {
    add_field => ... # hash (optional), default: {}
    codec => ... # codec (optional), default: "plain"
    count => ... # number (optional), default: 0
    lines => ... # array (optional)
    message => ... # string (optional), default: "Hello world!"
    tags => ... # array (optional)
    threads => ... # number (optional), default: 1
    type => ... # string (optional)
  }
}

Details

add_field

  • Value type is hash
  • Default value is {}

Add a field to an event

charset DEPRECATED

  • DEPRECATED WARNING: This config item is deprecated. It may be removed in a further version.
  • Value can be any of: "ASCII-8BIT", "Big5", "Big5-HKSCS", "Big5-UAO", "CP949", "Emacs-Mule", "EUC-JP", "EUC-KR", "EUC-TW", "GB18030", "GBK", "ISO-8859-1", "ISO-8859-2", "ISO-8859-3", "ISO-8859-4", "ISO-8859-5", "ISO-8859-6", "ISO-8859-7", "ISO-8859-8", "ISO-8859-9", "ISO-8859-10", "ISO-8859-11", "ISO-8859-13", "ISO-8859-14", "ISO-8859-15", "ISO-8859-16", "KOI8-R", "KOI8-U", "Shift_JIS", "US-ASCII", "UTF-8", "UTF-16BE", "UTF-16LE", "UTF-32BE", "UTF-32LE", "Windows-1251", "GB2312", "IBM437", "IBM737", "IBM775", "CP850", "IBM852", "CP852", "IBM855", "CP855", "IBM857", "IBM860", "IBM861", "IBM862", "IBM863", "IBM864", "IBM865", "IBM866", "IBM869", "Windows-1258", "GB1988", "macCentEuro", "macCroatian", "macCyrillic", "macGreek", "macIceland", "macRoman", "macRomania", "macThai", "macTurkish", "macUkraine", "CP950", "CP951", "stateless-ISO-2022-JP", "eucJP-ms", "CP51932", "GB12345", "ISO-2022-JP", "ISO-2022-JP-2", "CP50220", "CP50221", "Windows-1252", "Windows-1250", "Windows-1256", "Windows-1253", "Windows-1255", "Windows-1254", "TIS-620", "Windows-874", "Windows-1257", "Windows-31J", "MacJapanese", "UTF-7", "UTF8-MAC", "UTF-16", "UTF-32", "UTF8-DoCoMo", "SJIS-DoCoMo", "UTF8-KDDI", "SJIS-KDDI", "ISO-2022-JP-KDDI", "stateless-ISO-2022-JP-KDDI", "UTF8-SoftBank", "SJIS-SoftBank", "BINARY", "CP437", "CP737", "CP775", "IBM850", "CP857", "CP860", "CP861", "CP862", "CP863", "CP864", "CP865", "CP866", "CP869", "CP1258", "Big5-HKSCS:2008", "eucJP", "euc-jp-ms", "eucKR", "eucTW", "EUC-CN", "eucCN", "CP936", "ISO2022-JP", "ISO2022-JP2", "ISO8859-1", "CP1252", "ISO8859-2", "CP1250", "ISO8859-3", "ISO8859-4", "ISO8859-5", "ISO8859-6", "CP1256", "ISO8859-7", "CP1253", "ISO8859-8", "CP1255", "ISO8859-9", "CP1254", "ISO8859-10", "ISO8859-11", "CP874", "ISO8859-13", "CP1257", "ISO8859-14", "ISO8859-15", "ISO8859-16", "CP878", "CP932", "csWindows31J", "SJIS", "PCK", "MacJapan", "ASCII", "ANSI_X3.4-1968", "646", "CP65000", "CP65001", "UTF-8-MAC", "UTF-8-HFS", "UCS-2BE", "UCS-4BE", "UCS-4LE", "CP1251", "external", "locale"
  • There is no default value for this setting.

The character encoding used in this input. Examples include “UTF-8” and “cp1252”

This setting is useful if your log files are in Latin-1 (aka cp1252) or in another character set other than UTF-8.

This only affects “plain” format logs since json is UTF-8 already.

codec

  • Value type is codec
  • Default value is "plain"

The codec used for input data. Input codecs are a convenient method for decoding your data before it enters the input, without needing a separate filter in your Logstash pipeline.

count

  • Value type is number
  • Default value is 0

Set how many messages should be generated.

The default, 0, means generate an unlimited number of events.

debug DEPRECATED

  • DEPRECATED WARNING: This config item is deprecated. It may be removed in a further version.
  • Value type is boolean
  • Default value is false

format DEPRECATED

  • DEPRECATED WARNING: This config item is deprecated. It may be removed in a further version.
  • Value can be any of: "plain", "json", "json_event", "msgpack_event"
  • There is no default value for this setting.

The format of input data (plain, json, json_event)

lines

  • Value type is array
  • There is no default value for this setting.

The lines to emit, in order. This option cannot be used with the ‘message’ setting.

Example:

input {
  generator {
    lines => [
      "line 1",
      "line 2",
      "line 3"
    ]
    # Emit all lines 3 times.
    count => 3
  }
}

The above will emit “line 1” then “line 2” then “line”, then “line 1”, etc…

message

  • Value type is string
  • Default value is "Hello world!"

The message string to use in the event.

If you set this to ‘stdin’ then this plugin will read a single line from stdin and use that as the message string for every event.

Otherwise, this value will be used verbatim as the event message.

message_format DEPRECATED

  • DEPRECATED WARNING: This config item is deprecated. It may be removed in a further version.
  • Value type is string
  • There is no default value for this setting.

If format is “json”, an event sprintf string to build what the display @message should be given (defaults to the raw JSON). sprintf format strings look like %{fieldname}

If format is “json_event”, ALL fields except for @type are expected to be present. Not receiving all fields will cause unexpected results.

tags

  • Value type is array
  • There is no default value for this setting.

Add any number of arbitrary tags to your event.

This can help with processing later.

threads

  • Value type is number
  • Default value is 1

Set this to the number of threads you want this input to spawn. This is the same as declaring the input multiple times

type

  • Value type is string
  • There is no default value for this setting.

Add a ‘type’ field to all events handled by this input.

Types are used mainly for filter activation.

The type is stored as part of the event itself, so you can also use the type to search for it in the web interface.

If you try to set a type on an event that already has one (for example when you send an event from a shipper to an indexer) then a new input will not override the existing type. A type set at the shipper stays with that event for its life even when sent to another Logstash server.


This is documentation from lib/logstash/inputs/generator.rb