Thinking Outside the Box
For this example, I wanted to think outside of the box and show you an example how Graylog can be used to capture logs or data through anAPI and have it represented in a dashboard. JSON Web APIs have become a very popular method for getting access to datasets of structured information. This information can come from a variety of logs or specific information from databases or applications. For this instance, I wanted to find an external datasource and I could show you it in a dashboard. I found one. It’s the CanadianCOVID statistics.
What I’ve done is created an input for the HTTP API and it’s for the API for the Ontario COVID Statistics link, where you can download the Canadian statistics for COVID. Managed to get the data in and what I’ve done is created a parsing role in a pipeline and structured the actual fields the way it needed to have the data represented. Then, once the data’s come in,I was able to create a dashboard. As you can see here, this dashboard includes the total cases, total recoveries, total fatalities, and hospitalizations.Then, on the bottom, you’ll see two bar charts, one representing the hospitalizations, fatalities, total cases, and recoveries in comparison. On the right, total vaccines distributed, the total vaccinations, total vaccinated, and total tests.
Wait, There’s More
This is just one data source that I was able to integrate into my Graylog logging data. There are many other types of data sources that you may need to adjust to Graylog. The HTTP API input is a very powerful tool and mechanism to get data into Graylog. I hope you enjoyed this quick demo. As always, happy login with Graylog.
