The JSON Parser Should Support Configuring a Timezone

[ddrinka]

Feature Request

I have a data source that logs JSON data in local time, with no timezone indicator in the log. The data is parseable by the JSON Parser, but the timestamps are written to the database as UTC rather than as local timestamps.

Proposal:

The Grok Parser is a useful prototype of how I expect to be able to configure a timezone.

I'd like to add a clone of internal.ParseTimestamp to accept a timezone string as well as a time format, and use the new function with an optional configuration parameter in the JSON Parser.

I plan to contribute a PR for this functionality.

[danielnelson]

Are these unix epoch timestamps like 1550794308 or human readable timestamps more like Feb 21 11:27:02?

[ddrinka]

Human readable. Unix epoch timestamps should by definition be UTC.

[danielnelson]

Yes agreed. This sounds great, just call the new option json_timezone?

[ddrinka]

@danielnelson Great, this is working fine in production for me. Attached is the PR.