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Using Sematext Elasticsearch API

With Logs App, we expose the Elasticsearch API so you can search your logs from your own application, or by configuring/adapting existing Elasticsearch UIs, such as Kibana. You can also use this API to index events or change the mapping.

When you use the API, here are the things you need to know:

host name: logsene-receiver.sematext.com / logsene-syslog-receiver.eu.sematext.com (if using Sematext Cloud Europe)
port: 80 (443 for HTTPS)
index name: your Logs App token- note that this token should be kept secret
apiKey provided in one of the following ways:
- basic auth credentials username:apiKey password:31d28ff8-ae02-4ff9-b504-ea8013661412
- apiKey in Authorization HTTP header: Authorization: apiKey 31d28ff8-ae02-4ff9-b504-ea8013661412
Note that 31d28ff8-ae02-4ff9-b504-ea8013661412 is just an example. You can find and regenerate your apiKey:
- https://apps.sematext.com/ui/account/api (US),
- https://apps.eu.sematext.com/ui/account/api (EU).

Searching¶

Sematext supports a subset of Elasticsearch APIs, with rich query language and extensive capabilities of searching through data you've sent to it. The supported Search APIs include, but are not limited to:

URI based search
Request body based search
Real time GET
Multiple GET operations in a single request
Multiple Search operations in a single request

For each of the operations you'll need your Logs App token when calling logsene-receiver.sematext.com / logsene-syslog-receiver.eu.sematext.com (if using Sematext Cloud Europe).

In the following examples we will use a "dummy token" -cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912 as the token. You should use your real Logs management app token, of course.

URI based search¶

The simplest search method to get your logs from Sematext is fully compatible with URI Search in Elasticsearch.

You need to provide the query using the q parameter. For example, to search for theinternal and connection terms you would run the following:

curl  -u apiKey:31d28ff8-ae02-4ff9-b504-ea8013661412 -XGET 'logsene-receiver.sematext.com/cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912/_search?pretty&q=+internal%20+connection'

Note: Please check logs search syntax for reference.

Request body based search¶

The request body based search lets us leverage full Elasticsearch query DSL language along with its filtering capabilities and aggregations.

With full featured Elasticsearch query API we can search and find any data we are really looking for.

For example, to find log events that match the internal and connection terms run the following:

curl  -u apiKey:31d28ff8-ae02-4ff9-b504-ea8013661412 -XGET 'logsene-receiver.sematext.com/cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912/_search?pretty' -d '{
 "query" : {
  "bool" : {
   "must" : [
    {
     "match" : {
      "_all" : "internal"
     }
    },
    {
     "match" : {
      "_all" : "connection"
     }
    }
   ]
  }
 }
}'

To analyze this data further we can add aggregations to our query to find common status responses for example:

curl  -u apiKey:31d28ff8-ae02-4ff9-b504-ea8013661412 -XGET 'logsene-receiver.sematext.com/cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912/_search?pretty' -d '{
 "query" : {
  "bool" : {
   "must" : [
    {
     "match" : {
      "_all" : "internal"
     }
    },
    {
     "match" : {
      "_all" : "connection"
     }
    }
   ]
  }
 },
 "aggs" : {
  "statuses" : {
   "terms" : {
    "field" : "status"
   }
  }
 }
}'

Response format¶

Our Logs App, just like Elasticsearch, talks to you using JSON. Here's an example response:

{
  "took" : 10,
  "timed_out" : false,
  "_shards" : {
    "total" : 3,
    "successful" : 3,
    "failed" : 0
  },
  "hits" : {
    "total" : 126149,
    "max_score" : 0.57406324,
    "hits" : [ {
     ...
    ]
  },
  "aggregations" : {
    ...
  }
}

As you can see the response is a JSON object with three main sections:

the header, which gives us information about the status of the response, like time it took to render it, if the query was timed out,
the hits object that includes information about returned results (total count and maximum score) and of course the hits array, which includes the returned log events (10 by default),
the aggregations object that includes aggregations results if we've used aggregations in our query

The real example of the results returned look as follows:

{
  "took" : 365,
  "timed_out" : false,
  "_shards" : {
    "total" : 3,
    "successful" : 3,
    "failed" : 0
  },
  "hits" : {
    "total" : 126149,
    "max_score" : 0.57406324,
    "hits" : [ {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29clTtUV2O9bWZ1ZaI",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:21:37-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:05:37:26 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    }, {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29clTtUV2O9bWZ1ZaS",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:21:51-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:05:50:24 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    }, {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29clTtUV2O9bWZ1ZaU",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:22:01-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:05:50:26 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    }, {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29cgaeUV2O9bWZ1WBJ",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:21:37-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:05:36:12 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    }, {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29cgaeUV2O9bWZ1WBL",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:21:30-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:05:36:23 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    }, {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29cgaeUV2O9bWZ1WBN",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:21:46-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:05:36:25 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    }, {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29dMMJUV2O9bWZ110r",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:24:15-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:06:24:31 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    }, {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29dMMJUV2O9bWZ110t",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:25:04-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:06:24:33 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    }, {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29dMMJUV2O9bWZ110v",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:24:54-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:06:24:35 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    }, {
      "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
      "_type" : "apache",
      "_id" : "AU29dMMJUV2O9bWZ110z",
      "_score" : 0.57406324,
      "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T03:25:09-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [30/May/2013:06:26:01 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
    } ]
  },
  "aggregations" : {
    "statuses" : {
      "doc_count_error_upper_bound" : 0,
      "sum_other_doc_count" : 0,
      "buckets" : [ {
        "key" : "200",
        "doc_count" : 126149
      } ]
    }
  }
}

Real time GET operation¶

The real time GET operation is very simple and lets us get a single log event out of a particular Logs App. To retrieve a log event we need to provide Logs App with the following information:

index name - it will be <token>_free if your Logs App trial has expired and you don't have a paid plan, or <token>_<date> (where date is YYYY-MM-DD) when you have a paid plan for the Logs service,
type name - the type of the event you want to retrieve,
document identifier - the identifier of the event

For example, to retrieve a log event with identifier AU29tJz0UV2O9bWZ_KkU and type apache from our example App identified by cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912 token (App is free, which means that we need to append the token with _free postfix to get the index name) we would run the following command:

curl -XGET 'logsene-receiver.sematext.com/cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free/apache/AU29tJz0UV2O9bWZ_KkU'

Multiple GET operations in a single request¶

In addition to supporting the real time GET functionality, Logsene lets one leverage Elasticsearch MGet API, which allows us to retrieve multiple log events using the real time GET API in a single request.

For example, to retrieve a log event with identifierAU29tJz0UV2O9bWZ_KkU and AU29rlOPUV2O9bWZ-Daw which are of type apache from our example App identified by cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912 token we would run the following request:

curl  -u apiKey:31d28ff8-ae02-4ff9-b504-ea8013661412 -XGET 'logsene-receiver.sematext.com/cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free/_mget?pretty' -d '{
 "docs" : [
  { "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free", "_type" : "apache", "_id" : "AU29tJz0UV2O9bWZ_KkU"},
  { "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free", "_type" : "apache", "_id" : "AU29rlOPUV2O9bWZ-Daw"}
 ]
}'

As you can see, we are sending a HTTP GET request to the _mget REST end-point of Logs App receiver and get back a JSON object that contains the docs array. Each entry of the docs array is identifying a single log event by providing the index name (the _index property), the type name (the _type property) and the log event identifier (the _id property).

The response to the above command would look as follows:

{
  "docs" : [ {
    "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
    "_type" : "apache",
    "_id" : "AU29tJz0UV2O9bWZ_KkU",
    "_version" : 1,
    "found" : true,
    "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T04:34:14-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [03/Jun/2013:06:11:59 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
  }, {
    "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
    "_type" : "apache",
    "_id" : "AU29rlOPUV2O9bWZ-Daw",
    "_version" : 1,
    "found" : true,
    "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T04:27:14-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [03/Jun/2013:04:28:02 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
  } ]
}

Multiple Search operations in a single request¶

Similar to MGet, Sematext lets you run multiple search requests in a single HTTP request using Elasticsearch Multi Search API.

The request needs to be run against _msearch REST end-point and each query needs to include two lines - meta line defining the index name and a line defining the query using Elasticsearch query DSL.

For example, the following example shows the usage of Multiple Search API:

curl  -u apiKey:31d28ff8-ae02-4ff9-b504-ea8013661412 -XGET 'logsene-receiver.sematext.com/_msearch?pretty' --data-binary '{ "index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free" }
{ "query" : { "match_all" : {} }, "size" : 1 }
{ "index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free" }
{ "query" : { "term" : { "status" : 200 } }, "size" : 1 }'

Keep in mind that Multiple Search API is using --data-binary switch in the curl command to keep the new line characters in the request. This is crucial to make the Multiple Search API working correctly.

The response includes standard search response for each of the included queries and for the above query will look as follows:

{
  "responses" : [ {
    "took" : 5,
    "timed_out" : false,
    "_shards" : {
      "total" : 2,
      "successful" : 2,
      "failed" : 0
    },
    "hits" : {
      "total" : 452761,
      "max_score" : 1.0,
      "hits" : [ {
        "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
        "_type" : "apache",
        "_id" : "AU293_WeUV2O9bWZGVUN",
        "_score" : 1.0,
        "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T05:22:07-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [03/Jun/2013:12:21:21 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
      } ]
    }
  }, {
    "took" : 14,
    "timed_out" : false,
    "_shards" : {
      "total" : 2,
      "successful" : 2,
      "failed" : 0
    },
    "hits" : {
      "total" : 387680,
      "max_score" : 1.1691506,
      "hits" : [ {
        "_index" : "cc5e9c1b-3046-4e43-998e-2a0b2c01b912_free",
        "_type" : "apache",
        "_id" : "AU293_WeUV2O9bWZGVUN",
        "_score" : 1.1691506,
        "_source":{"status": "200", "request": "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0", "@timestamp": "2015-06-04T05:22:07-0400", "userid": "-", "host": "127.0.0.1", "referer": "-", "user_agent": "Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)", "client_identity": "-", "message": "127.0.0.1 - - [03/Jun/2013:12:21:21 +0000] \"OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0\" 200 - \"-\" \"Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.4 with Suhosin-Patch (internal dummy connection)\"\n", "size": "-"}
      } ]
    }
  } ]
}