Formatter Plugins

Fluentd has nine (9) types of plugins:

• Input
• Parser
• Filter
• Output
• Formatter
• Storage
• Service Discovery
• Buffer
• Metrics

This article gives an overview of the Formatter Plugin.

Overview

Sometimes, the output format for an output plugin does not meet one's needs. Fluentd has a pluggable system called Formatter that lets the user extend and reuse custom output formats.

How To Use

For an output plugin that supports Formatter, the <format> directive can be used to change the output format.

For example, by default, out_file plugin outputs data as

2014-08-25 00:00:00 +0000<TAB>foo.bar<TAB>{"k1":"v1", "k2":"v2"}

However, if you set @type json in <format> like this:

<match foo.bar>
  @type file
  path /path/to/file
  <format>
    @type json
  </format>
</match>

The output changes to

{"k1":"v1", "k2":"v2"}

i.e., each line is a single JSON object without "time" and "tag" fields. If you want to include "time" and "tag", use Inject section.

See this section to learn how to develop a custom formatter.

List of Built-in Formatters

• out_file
• json
• ltsv
• csv
• msgpack
• hash
• single_value
• tsv

List of Output/Filter Plugins with Formatter Support

• filter_stdout
• out_file
• out_s3

If this article is incorrect or outdated, or omits critical information, please let us know. Fluentd is an open-source project under Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). All components are available under the Apache 2 License.