event-conventions.asciidoc

Naming Conventions

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

Field Names

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

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