Access Logging

Overview

Contour allows you to control Envoy’s access logging. By default, HTTP and HTTPS access logs are written to /dev/stdout by the Envoy containers and look like following:

[2021-04-14T16:36:00.361Z] "GET /foo HTTP/1.1" 200 - 0 463 6 3 "-" "HTTPie/1.0.3" "837aa8dc-344f-4faa-b7d5-c9cce1028519" "localhost:8080" "127.0.0.1:8081"

The detailed description of each field can be found in Envoy access logging documentation.

Customizing Access Log Destination

You can change the destination file where the access log is written by using Contour command line parameters --envoy-http-access-log and --envoy-https-access-log.

Customizing Access Log Format

The access log can take two different formats, both can be customized

• Text based access logs, like shown in the example above.
• Structured JSON logging.

Text Based Access Logging

Ensure that you have selected envoy as the access log format. Note that this is the default format if the parameters are not given.

• Add --accesslog-format=envoy to your Contour startup line, or
• Add accesslog-format: envoy to your configuration file.

Customize the access log format by defining accesslog-format-string in your configuration file.

accesslog-format-string: "[%START_TIME%] \"%REQ(:METHOD)% %REQ(X-ENVOY-ORIGINAL-PATH?:PATH)% %PROTOCOL%\" %RESPONSE_CODE% %RESPONSE_FLAGS% %BYTES_RECEIVED% %BYTES_SENT% %DURATION% %RESP(X-ENVOY-UPSTREAM-SERVICE-TIME)% \"%REQ(X-FORWARDED-FOR)%\" \"%REQ(USER-AGENT)%\" \"%REQ(X-REQUEST-ID)%\" \"%REQ(:AUTHORITY)%\" \"%UPSTREAM_HOST%\"\n"

After restarting Contour and successful validation of the configuration, the new format will take effect in a short while.

Refer to Envoy access logging documentation for the description of the command operators, and note that the format string needs to end in a linefeed \n.

Structured JSON Logging

Contour allows you to choose from a set of JSON fields that will be expanded into Envoy templates and sent to Envoy. There is a default set of fields if you enable JSON logging, and you may customize which fields you log.

The list of available fields are discoverable in the following objects:

• jsonFields are fields that have built in mappings to commonly used envoy operators.
• envoySimpleOperators are the names of simple envoy operators that don’t require arguments, they are case-insensitive when configured.
• envoyComplexOperators are the names of complex envoy operators that require arguments.

The default list of fields is available at DefaultAccessLogJSONFields.

Enabling the Feature

To enable the feature you have two options:

• Add --accesslog-format=json to your Contour startup line.
• Add accesslog-format: json to your configuration file.

Without any further customization, the default fields will be used.

Customizing Logged Fields

To customize the logged fields, add a json-fields list of strings to your configuration file. If the json-fields key is not specified, the default fields will be configured.

To use a value from jsonFields or envoySimpleOperators, simply include the name of the value in the list of strings. The jsonFields are case-sensitive, but envoySimpleOperators are not.

To use envoyComplexOperators or to use alternative field names, specify strings as key/value pairs like "fieldName=%OPERATOR(...)%".

Unknown field names in non key/value fields will result in validation errors, as will unknown Envoy operators in key/value fields. Note that the DYNAMIC_METADATA and FILTER_STATE Envoy logging operators are not supported at this time due to the complexity of their validation.

See the example config file to see this used in context.

Omitting Logs with Empty Values

Contour automatically omits empty fields in Envoy JSON access logs, enhancing clarity and delivering more concise and relevant log outputs by default.

Sample Configuration File

Here is a sample config:

accesslog-format: json
json-fields:
  - "@timestamp"
  - "authority"
  - "bytes_received"
  - "bytes_sent"
  - "customer_id=%REQ(X-CUSTOMER-ID)%"
  - "downstream_local_address"
  - "downstream_remote_address"
  - "duration"
  - "method"
  - "path"
  - "protocol"
  - "request_id"
  - "requested_server_name"
  - "response_code"
  - "response_flags"
  - "uber_trace_id"
  - "upstream_cluster"
  - "upstream_host"
  - "upstream_local_address"
  - "upstream_service_time"
  - "user_agent"
  - "x_forwarded_for"

Logging the route source

Contour can log the kind, namespace and name of the Kubernetes resource that generated the route for a given access log entry.

For text-based access logging, the following command operators can be used:

• %METADATA(ROUTE:envoy.access_loggers.file:io.projectcontour.kind)%
• %METADATA(ROUTE:envoy.access_loggers.file:io.projectcontour.namespace)%
• %METADATA(ROUTE:envoy.access_loggers.file:io.projectcontour.name)%

For JSON access logging, the following fields can be added (these are Contour-specific aliases to the above command operators):

• contour_config_kind
• contour_config_namespace
• contour_config_name

Using Access Log Formatter Extensions

Envoy allows implementing custom access log command operators as extensions. Following extensions are supported by Contour: