Decode XML

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This functionality is in technical preview and may be changed or removed in a future release. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but features in technical preview are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.

The decode_xml processor decodes XML data that is stored under the field key. It outputs the result into the target_field.

This example demonstrates how to decode an XML string contained in the message field and write the resulting fields into the root of the document. Any fields that already exist will be overwritten.

processors:
  - decode_xml:
      field: message
      target_field: ""
      overwrite_keys: true

By default any decoding errors that occur will stop the processing chain and the error will be added to error.message field. To ignore all errors and continue to the next processor you can set ignore_failure: true. To specifically ignore failures caused by field not existing you can set ignore_missing: true.

processors:
  - decode_xml:
      field: example
      target_field: xml
      ignore_missing: true
      ignore_failure: true

By default all keys converted from XML will have the names converted to lowercase. If there is a need to disable this behavior it is possible to use the below example:

processors:
  - decode_xml:
      field: message
      target_field: xml
      to_lower: false

Example XML input:

<catalog>
  <book seq="1">
    <author>William H. Gaddis</author>
    <title>The Recognitions</title>
    <review>One of the great seminal American novels of the 20th century.</review>
  </book>
</catalog>

Will produce the following output:

{
	"xml": {
		"catalog": {
			"book": {
				"author": "William H. Gaddis",
				"review": "One of the great seminal American novels of the 20th century.",
				"seq": "1",
				"title": "The Recognitions"
			}
		}
	}
}

The supported configuration options are:

field
(Required) Source field containing the XML. Defaults to message.
target_field
(Optional) The field under which the decoded XML will be written. By default the decoded XML object replaces the field from which it was read. To merge the decoded XML fields into the root of the event specify target_field with an empty string (target_field: ""). Note that the null value (target_field:) is treated as if the field was not set at all.
overwrite_keys
(Optional) A boolean that specifies whether keys that already exist in the event are overwritten by keys from the decoded XML object. The default value is true.
to_lower
(Optional) Converts all keys to lowercase. Accepts either true or false. The default value is true.
document_id
(Optional) XML key to use as the document ID. If configured, the field will be removed from the original XML document and stored in @metadata._id.
ignore_missing
(Optional) If true the processor will not return an error when a specified field does not exist. Defaults to false.
ignore_failure
(Optional) Ignore all errors produced by the processor. Defaults to false.

See Conditions for a list of supported conditions.