Syslog plugin

Log request and response data to Syslog.

Configuration Reference

You can configure this plugin using the Kong Admin API or through declarative configuration, which involves directly editing the Kong configuration file.

This plugin is compatible with requests with the following protocols:

http
https
grpc
grpcs

This plugin is compatible with DB-less mode.

In DB-less mode, Kong does not have an Admin API. If using this mode, configure the plugin using declarative configuration.

Enabling the plugin on a Service

Kong Admin API

Kubernetes

Declarative (YAML)

For example, configure this plugin on a Service by making the following request:

$ curl -X POST http://<admin-hostname>:8001/services/<service>/plugins \
    --data "name=syslog" 

First, create a KongPlugin resource:

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
  name: <syslog-example>
config:
  <optional_parameter>: <value>
plugin: syslog

Next, apply the KongPlugin resource to a Service by annotating the Service as follows:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: <service>
  labels:
    app: <service>
  annotations:
    plugins.konghq.com: <syslog-example>
spec:
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80
    protocol: TCP
    name: <service>
  selector:
    app: <service>

Note: The KongPlugin resource only needs to be defined once and can be applied to any Service, Consumer, or Route in the namespace. If you want the plugin to be available cluster-wide, create the resource as a KongClusterPlugin instead of KongPlugin.

For example, configure this plugin on a Service by adding this section to your declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: syslog
  service: <service>
  config:
    <optional_parameter>: <value>

<service> is the id or name of the Service that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin on a Route

Kong Admin API

Kubernetes

Declarative (YAML)

For example, configure this plugin on a Route with:

$ curl -X POST http://<admin-hostname>:8001/routes/<route>/plugins \
    --data "name=syslog" 

First, create a KongPlugin resource:

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
  name: <syslog-example>
config:
  <optional_parameter>: <value>
plugin: syslog

Then, apply it to an ingress (Route or Routes) by annotating the ingress as follows:

apiVersion: networking/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: <route>
  annotations:
    plugins.konghq.com: <syslog-example>
spec:
  rules:
  - host: examplehostname.com
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /bar
        backend:
          serviceName: echo
          servicePort: 80

For example, configure this plugin on a Route by adding this section to your declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: syslog
  route: <route>
  config:
    <optional_parameter>: <value>

<route> is the id or name of the Route that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin on a Consumer

Kong Admin API

Kubernetes

Declarative (YAML)

For example, configure this plugin on a Consumer with:

$ curl -X POST http://<admin-hostname>:8001/consumers/<consumer>/plugins \
    --data "name=syslog" 

You can combine consumer.id, service.id, or route.id in the same request, to further narrow the scope of the plugin.

First, create a KongPlugin resource:

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongPlugin
metadata:
  name: <syslog-example>
config:
  <optional_parameter>: <value>
plugin: syslog

Then, apply it to a Consumer by annotating the KongConsumer resource as follows:

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongConsumer
metadata:
  name: <consumer>
  annotations:
    plugins.konghq.com: <syslog-example>

For example, configure this plugin on a Consumer by adding this section to your declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: syslog
  consumer: <consumer>
  config:
    <optional_parameter>: <value>

<consumer> is the id or username of the Consumer that this plugin configuration will target.

Enabling the plugin globally

A plugin which is not associated to any Service, Route, or Consumer is considered global, and will be run on every request. Read the Plugin Reference and the Plugin Precedence sections for more information.

Kong Admin API

Kubernetes

Declarative (YAML)

For example, configure this plugin globally with:

$ curl -X POST http://<admin-hostname>:8001/plugins/ \
    --data "name=syslog" 

Create a KongClusterPlugin resource and label it as global:

apiVersion: configuration.konghq.com/v1
kind: KongClusterPlugin
metadata:
  name: <global-syslog>
  labels:
    global: \"true\"
config:
  <optional_parameter>: <value>
plugin: syslog

For example, configure this plugin using the plugins: entry in the declarative configuration file:

plugins:
- name: syslog
  config:
    <optional_parameter>: <value>

Parameters

Here's a list of all the parameters which can be used in this plugin's configuration:

Form Parameter	Description
`name`	The name of the plugin to use, in this case `syslog`.
`service.id`	The ID of the Service the plugin targets.
`route.id`	The ID of the Route the plugin targets.
`consumer.id`	The ID of the Consumer the plugin targets.
`enabled` default value: `true`	Whether this plugin will be applied.
`config.successful_severity` optional default value: `info`	An optional logging severity assigned to the all successful requests with response status code less then 400 .
`config.client_errors_severity` optional default value: `info`	An optional logging severity assigned to the all failed requests with response status code 400 or higher but less than 500.
`config.server_errors_severity` optional default value: `info`	An optional logging severity assigned to the all failed requests with response status code 500 or higher.
`config.log_level` optional default value: `info`	An optional logging severity, any request with equal or higher severity will be logged to System log.

Log Format

Every request will be logged to System log in SYSLOG standard, with message component in the following format:

{
    "request": {
        "method": "GET",
        "uri": "/get",
        "url": "http://httpbin.org:8000/get",
        "size": "75",
        "querystring": {},
        "headers": {
            "accept": "*/*",
            "host": "httpbin.org",
            "user-agent": "curl/7.37.1"
        },
        "tls": {
            "version": "TLSv1.2",
            "cipher": "ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384",
            "supported_client_ciphers": "ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384",
            "client_verify": "NONE"
        }
    },
    "upstream_uri": "/",
    "response": {
        "status": 200,
        "size": "434",
        "headers": {
            "Content-Length": "197",
            "via": "kong/0.3.0",
            "Connection": "close",
            "access-control-allow-credentials": "true",
            "Content-Type": "application/json",
            "server": "nginx",
            "access-control-allow-origin": "*"
        }
    },
    "tries": [
        {
            "state": "next",
            "code": 502,
            "ip": "127.0.0.1",
            "port": 8000
        },
        {
            "ip": "127.0.0.1",
            "port": 8000
        }
    ],
    "authenticated_entity": {
        "consumer_id": "80f74eef-31b8-45d5-c525-ae532297ea8e",
        "id": "eaa330c0-4cff-47f5-c79e-b2e4f355207e"
    },
    "route": {
        "created_at": 1521555129,
        "hosts": null,
        "id": "75818c5f-202d-4b82-a553-6a46e7c9a19e",
        "methods": null,
        "paths": [
            "/example-path"
        ],
        "preserve_host": false,
        "protocols": [
            "http",
            "https"
        ],
        "regex_priority": 0,
        "service": {
            "id": "0590139e-7481-466c-bcdf-929adcaaf804"
        },
        "strip_path": true,
        "updated_at": 1521555129
    },
    "service": {
        "connect_timeout": 60000,
        "created_at": 1521554518,
        "host": "example.com",
        "id": "0590139e-7481-466c-bcdf-929adcaaf804",
        "name": "myservice",
        "path": "/",
        "port": 80,
        "protocol": "http",
        "read_timeout": 60000,
        "retries": 5,
        "updated_at": 1521554518,
        "write_timeout": 60000
    },
    "workspaces": [
        {
            "id":"b7cac81a-05dc-41f5-b6dc-b87e29b6c3a3",
            "name": "default"
        }
    ],
    "consumer": {
        "username": "demo",
        "created_at": 1491847011000,
        "id": "35b03bfc-7a5b-4a23-a594-aa350c585fa8"
    },
    "latencies": {
        "proxy": 1430,
        "kong": 9,
        "request": 1921
    },
    "client_ip": "127.0.0.1",
    "started_at": 1433209822425
}

A few considerations on the above JSON object:

request contains properties about the request sent by the client
response contains properties about the response sent to the client
tries contains the list of (re)tries (successes and failures) made by the load balancer for this request
route contains Kong properties about the specific Route requested
service contains Kong properties about the Service associated with the requested Route
authenticated_entity contains Kong properties about the authenticated credential (if an authentication plugin has been enabled)
workspaces contains Kong properties of the Workspaces associated with the requested Route. Only in Kong Enterprise version >= 0.34.
consumer contains the authenticated Consumer (if an authentication plugin has been enabled)
latencies contains some data about the latencies involved:
- proxy is the time it took for the final service to process the request
- kong is the internal Kong latency that it took to run all the plugins
- request is the time elapsed between the first bytes were read from the client and after the last bytes were sent to the client. Useful for detecting slow clients.
client_ip contains the original client IP address
started_at contains the UTC timestamp of when the API transaction has started to be processed.

Notes

Make sure Syslog daemon is running on the instance and it’s configured with logging level severity same as or lower than the set config.log_level.

Kong Process Errors

This logging plugin will only log HTTP request and response data. If you are looking for the Kong process error file (which is the nginx error file), then you can find it at the following path: {prefix}/logs/error.log

About this Plugin
Made by
Categories	Logging
DB-less compatible?	Yes (Kong Gateway only)
Bundled with...
Kong Enterprise 2.1.x 1.5.x 1.3-x 0.36-x 0.35-x 0.34-x 0.33-x 0.32-x 0.31-x Kong Community 2.1.x 2.0.x 1.5.x 1.4.x 1.3.x 1.2.x 1.1.x 1.0.x 0.14.x 0.13.x 0.12.x 0.11.x 0.10.x 0.9.x 0.8.x 0.7.x 0.6.x