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WARNING: Version 5.4 of Beats has passed its EOL date.

This documentation is no longer being maintained and may be removed. If you are running this version, we strongly advise you to upgrade. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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Elastic Docs ›Beats Platform Reference [5.4] ›Developer Guide: Creating a New Beat

Naming Conventions

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Naming Conventions

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When creating events, use the following conventions for field names and abbreviations.

Field Names

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Use the following naming conventions for field names:

  • All fields must be lower case.
  • Use snake case (underscores) for combining words.
  • Group related fields into subdocuments by using dot (.) notation. Groups typically have common prefixes. For example, if you have fields called CPULoad and CPUSystem in a service, you would convert them into cpu.load and cpu.system in the event.
  • Avoid repeating the namespace in field names. If a word or abbreviation appears in the namespace, it’s not needed in the field name. For example, instead of cpu.cpu_load, use cpu.load.
  • Use standardised names and avoid using abbreviations that aren’t commonly known.
  • Organise the documents from general to specific to allow for namespacing. The type, such as .pct, should always be last. For example, system.core.user.pct.
  • If two fields are the same, but with different units, remove the less granular one. For example, include timeout.sec, but don’t include timeout.min. If a less granular value is required, you can calculate it later.

  • If a field name matches the namespace used for nested fields, add .value to the field name. For example, instead of:

    workers
workers.busy
workers.idle

    Use:

    workers.value
workers.busy
workers.idle
  • Do not use dots (.) in individual field names. Dots are reserved for grouping related fields into subdocuments.
  • Use singular and plural names properly to reflect the field content. For example, use requests_per_sec rather than request_per_sec.

Standardised Names

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Here is a list of standardised names and units that are used across all Beats:

Use…​ Instead of…​

avg

average

connection

conn

count

day

days, d

max

maximum

min

minimum

pct

percentage

request

req

sec

seconds, second, s

ms

millisecond, millis

mb

megabytes

msg

message

ns

nanoseconds

norm

normalized

us

microseconds
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