# ltsv

The `ltsv` parser plugin parses [LTSV](http://ltsv.org/) format.

## Parameters

### delimiter

Specify field delimiter. Default is `\t`.

### label\_delimiter

Specify key-value delimiter. Default is `:`.

### time\_key

Specify time field for event time. Default is `time`.

If there is no time field in the record, this parser uses current time as an event time.

### time\_format

If time field value is formatted string, e.g. "28/Feb/2013:12:00:00 +0900", you need to specify this parameter to parse it.

Default is `nil` and it uses `Time.parse` method to parse the field.

See [Time#strptime](http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.4.1/libdoc/time/rdoc/Time.html#method-c-strptime) for additional format information.

### null\_value\_pattern

Specify null value pattern. Default is `nil`.

If given field value is matched with this pattern, the field value is replaced with `nil`.

### null\_empty\_string

If `true`, empty string field is replaced with `nil`. Default is `false`.

### types

Although every parsed field has type `string` by default, you can specify other types. This is useful when filtering particular fields numerically or storing data with sensible type information.

The syntax is

```
types <field_name_1>:<type_name_1>,<field_name_2>:<type_name_2>,...
```

e.g.,

```
types user_id:integer,paid:bool,paid_usd_amount:float
```

As demonstrated above, "," is used to delimit field-type pairs while ":" is used to separate a field name with its intended type.

Unspecified fields are parsed at the default string type.

The list of supported types are shown below:

* string
* bool
* integer ("int" would NOT work!)
* float
* time
* array

For the `time` and `array` types, there is an optional third field after the type name. For the "time" type, you can specify a time format like you would in `time_format`.

For the "array" type, the third field specifies the delimiter (the default is ","). For example, if a field called "item\_ids" contains the value "3,4,5", `types item_ids:array` parses it as \["3", "4", "5"]. Alternatively, if the value is "Adam|Alice|Bob", `types item_ids:array:|` parses it as \["Adam", "Alice", "Bob"].

## Example

```
time:2013/02/28 12:00:00\thost:192.168.0.1\treq_id:111\tuser:-
```

This incoming event is parsed as:

```
time:
1362020400 (2013/02/28/ 12:00:00)

record:
{
  "host"   : "192.168.0.1",
  "req_id" : "111",
  "user"   : "-"
}
```

If you set `null_value_pattern '-'` in the configuration, `user` field becomes `nil` instead of `"-"`.

If this article is incorrect or outdated, or omits critical information, please [let us know](https://github.com/fluent/fluentd-docs-gitbook/issues?state=open). [Fluentd](http://www.fluentd.org/) is a open source project under [Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)](https://cncf.io/). All components are available under the Apache 2 License.