NGINX JSON log configuration for Google Cloud / StackDriver log format

nginx.conf

# this outputs JSON formatted logs which are easy to parse for any logging agent (such as fluentd)
# the format conforms to Google Cloud Logging so logs are nicely structured in the logs viewer
# see also: https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/reference/v2/rest/v2/LogEntry#httprequest

# put the following lines in your nginx config
# /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

log_format json_combined escape=json
  '{'
    '"time":"$msec",'
    '"httpRequest":{'
      '"requestMethod":"$request_method",'
      '"requestUrl":"$scheme://$host$request_uri",'
      '"requestSize":$request_length,'
      '"status":"$status",'
      '"responseSize":$bytes_sent,'
      '"userAgent":"$http_user_agent",'
      '"remoteIp":"$remote_addr",'
      '"serverIp":"$server_addr",'
      '"referer":"$http_referer",'
      '"latency":"${request_time}s",'
      '"protocol":"$server_protocol"'
    '}'
  '}';


access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  json_combined;

# example configuration for fluentd
# /etc/google-fluentd/config.d/nginx.conf

<source>
  @type tail
  format none
  path /var/log/nginx/access.log
  pos_file /var/lib/google-fluentd/pos/nginx-access.pos
  read_from_head true
  tag nginx-access
  <parse>
    @type json
  </parse>
</source>

Nice start of my wish to have better/custom nginx logs at google stackdriver site.

Maybe worth mentioning that the value types are importat, and e.g. status must be int, not string like your example. See https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/reference/v2/rest/v2/LogEntry#HttpRequest

Working for me at google k8s behind ambassador gateway:

log_format json_combined
  '{'
    '"time":"$msec",'
    '"httpRequest":{'
      '"requestMethod":"$request_method",'
      '"requestUrl":"$scheme://$host$request_uri",'
      '"requestSize":$request_length,'
      '"status":$status,'
      '"responseSize":$bytes_sent,'
      '"userAgent":"$http_user_agent",'
      '"remoteIp":"$http_x_forwarded_for",'
      '"serverIp":"$server_addr",'
      '"referer":"$http_referer",'
      '"latency":"${request_time}s",'
      '"protocol":"$server_protocol"'
    '}'
  '}';