actiondb

Actiondb is a library and its associated tools to efficiently extract information from unstructured data. It's a tool to parse logs and extract key-value pairs with predefined patterns from them.

The patterns can be specified line-by-line (plain pattern file) or in a JSON serialized file. The latter one allows you to give a name, a unique identifier (UUID) and to test messages to each pattern.

This library is intended to used with syslog-ng. You can find a Docker image which uses this library as a parser:

actiondb-docker

Patterns

A pattern is composed of literals and parsers, like:

Jun %{INT:day} %{INT:hour}:%{INT:min}:%{INT:sec} server sshd[%{INT:pid}]: Accepted publickey for joe

It can be used to parse the following log message:

Jun 25 14:09:58 server sshd[26665]: Accepted publickey for joe

Plain pattern files

A plain pattern file contains patterns in each lines as they are defined in Patterns. ActionDB will generate a random UUID for each pattern. If there is a syntax error in one pattern the rest won't be checked and ActionDB returns an error.

JSON pattern files

These files contains patterns and their attributes. A JSON file looks like the following example

{
  "patterns": [
    {
      "uuid": "c11c806a-766d-4a09-9f24-7de1fe02e51e",
      "name": "SSH_PUBKEY",
      "pattern": "Jun %{INT:day} %{INT:hour}:%{INT:min}:%{INT:sec} lobotomy sshd[%{INT:pid}]: Accepted publickey for zts from %{INT:oct0}.%{INT:oct1}.%{INT:oct2}.%{INT:oct3} port %{INT:port} ssh2"
    },
    {
      "name": "SSH_DISCONNECT",
      "uuid": "9a49c47d-29e9-4072-be84-3b76c6814743",
      "pattern": "Jun %{INT:day} %{INT:hour}:%{INT:min}:%{INT:sec} lobotomy sshd[%{INT:pid}]: Received disconnect from %{GREEDY:ipaddr}: %{INT:dunno}: disconnected by user"
    },
    {
      "uuid": "fa8bdbcb-e0fd-4da1-9fa4-15ecfec28ad2",
      "pattern": "Jun %{INT:day} %{INT:hour}:%{INT:min}:%{INT:sec} lobotomy sshd[%{INT:pid}]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session closed for user zts"
    }
  ]
}

It has the following structure:

• patterns: it's a top level array of pattern objects

A pattern object consists of the following key-value pairs:

• uuid: it's a required field and contains a UUID,
• name: it's an optional field and contains the name of the pattern. Currently there is no restriction about the valid character set.
• pattern: it's the same thing as defined in Patterns
• test_messages: it's an array of test messages which can be used to test the patters.

A test message object has the following key-value pairs:

• message: a string message which should be parsed,
• values: an object which defines the expected key-value pairs after the parsing. Every key and value must be strings.

An example test message object can be seen in the following example:

{  
  "patterns":[  
    {  
      "uuid":"6d2cba0c-e241-464a-89c3-8035cac8f73e",
      "name":"LOGGEN",
      "pattern":"seq: %{INT:.loggen.seq}, thread: %{INT:.loggen.thread}, runid: %{INT:.loggen.runid}, stamp: %{GREEDY:.loggen.stamp} %{GREEDY:.loggen.padding}",
      "test_messages":[  
        {  
          "message":"seq: 0000000001, thread: 0000, runid: 1437655178, stamp: 2015-07-23T14:39:38 PADDPADDPADDPADD",
          "values":{  
            ".loggen.seq":"0000000001",
            ".loggen.thread":"0000",
            ".loggen.runid":"1437655178",
            ".loggen.stamp":"2015-07-23T14:39:38",
            ".loggen.padding":"PADDPADDPADDPADD"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Parsers

Parsers can be used to extract data from unstructured text.

Every parser has the following syntax:

%{PARSER_TYPE(required_arg1, required_arg2, optional_arg1="value", optional_arg2=value):parser_instance_name}

If a parser doesn't have extra arguments its parameter list can be omitted:

%{PARSER_TYPE:parser_instance_name}

You can use the _, ., [0-9], - and [a-zA-Z] characters as parser names.

Available parsers

SET

Parses only the characters which was given as its arguments. An optional minimum and maximum length can be specified.

Example

%{SET("abcd",min_len=1,max_len=2):parsed_value_name}

It's identical to the [abcd]{1,2} regular expression (but faster).

INT

It reuses the SET parser with the character set of the numbers from 0 to 9. An optional minimum and maximum length can be specified as in SET.

GREEDY

It tries to fill in the gap between a parser and a literal or two literals. It will use the next literal as an "end string" condition. If the GREEDY parser is the last parser in the pattern it will consume the whole remaining message.

Example

Pattern:

from %{GREEDY:ipaddr}: %{INT:dunno}

Sample message:

from 1.2.3.4: 123

Extracted key-value pairs:

• (ipaddr,1.2.3.4)
• (dunno,123)

adbtool

adbtool is a tool which can be used for the following purposes:

• validate patterns,
• parse texts.

It support the validate and parse subcommands. For more information check it's --help option.

Changelog

Actiondb 0.2.0

User visible changes:

• support JSON pattern files
• nicer and more precise error messages

Internal changes:

• Matcher becomes a trait and ParserTrie implements it
• the pattern reading and trie building code is extracted into a Builder struct
• Builder is able to populate any Matcher instance from any type which implements the PatternSource trait
• BuildResult = Result<Pattern, BuildError>
• BuildError contains all possible Error types (IO, pattern parse errors, etc.)
• PatternSource is automatically implemented for every type which implements Iterator<Item=BuildResult>
• this makes possible to generalize the Matcher building logic:
• BuildResults are being read from a PatternSource and if they are Ok() then they are added to the Matcher
• in case of an Err() value the building process stops and the error is returned
• Factory is introduced to create Matcher instances from files (JSON and plain pattern files)
• Factory::form_file() is file extension agnostic and creates a Matcher instance from the given file
• the big modules are split into smaller submodules
• allow . character in Parser names
• the JSON files can contain test messages. They are tested when their pattern is added to the Matcher.
• Coveralls.io checks every modifications
• new unit tests are added