---
title: Use Vector to ship your log files to Honeybadger Insights
description: Here's how to use Vector to watch your log files and send the events they record to Honeybadger.
url: https://docs.honeybadger.io/guides/insights/integrations/log-files/
---

You can use [Vector](https://vector.dev) to watch your existing log files and send the events they record. Here’s a sample configuration that will encode the log lines into the newline-delimited JSON format that our API expects:

```yaml
# Put this in /etc/vector/vector.yaml
sources:
  app:
    type: "file"
    include: ["/home/app/shared/log/*.log"]


sinks:
  honeybadger_events:
    type: "http"
    inputs: ["app"]
    uri: "https://api.honeybadger.io/v1/events"
    request:
      headers:
        X-API-Key: "PROJECT_API_KEY"
    encoding:
      codec: "json"
    framing:
      method: "newline_delimited"
```

If you are using something like [Lograge](https://github.com/roidrage/lograge) to emit JSON-formatted logs (and you should — it’s awesome), you can have Vector replace the message field with a JSON payload:

```yaml
# Put this in /etc/vector/vector.yaml
sources:
  app:
    type: "file"
    include: ["/home/app/shared/log/*.log"]


transforms:
  parse_logs:
    type: "remap"
    inputs: ["app"]
    source: |
      payload, err = parse_json(string!(.message))
      if err == null {
        .payload = payload
        del(.message)
      }


sinks:
  honeybadger_events:
    type: "http"
    inputs: ["parse_logs"]
    uri: "https://api.honeybadger.io/v1/events"
    request:
      headers:
        X-API-Key: "PROJECT_API_KEY"
    encoding:
      codec: "json"
    framing:
      method: "newline_delimited"
```

Or if you are using logfmt-style logs, like “controller=pages action=index”, then you can add a transform that parses that into JSON:

```yaml
---
transforms:
  parse_logs:
    type: "remap"
    inputs: ["app"]
    source: |
      payload, err = parse_key_value(string!(.message))
      if err == null {
        .payload = payload
        del(.message)
      }
```

Again, we **highly** recommend structured logging. 😉

By the way, Vector supports a variety of [input sources](https://vector.dev/docs/reference/configuration/sources/), such as Docker logs, Redis metrics, etc., in addition to log files. You can define whatever `sources` and `transforms` make sense for what you want to capture, then use the `sinks` section provided in the examples above to send everything to Insights.

The easiest way to run Vector is via Docker. Here’s a sample [Docker Compose](https://docs.docker.com/compose/) configuration you can use, assuming your Vector configuration is in a file named `vector.yaml`:

```yaml
version: "3.2"
services:
  vector:
    image: timberio/vector:latest-alpine
    volumes:
      - "vector.yaml:/etc/vector/vector.yaml:ro"
```

## Additional Vector configuration examples

### Nginx logs

You can use regular expressions to extract the fields of an Nginx log to create a JSON structure in a transform:

```yaml
sources:
  nginx_logs:
    type: "file"
    ignore_older: 86400
    include:
      - "/var/log/nginx/access.log"
    read_from: "end"


transforms:
  parse_nginx:
    type: "remap"
    inputs:
      - "nginx_logs"
    source: |
      match, err = parse_regex(.message, r'(?P<remote_addr>[^ ]*) - (?P<user>[^ ]*) \[(?P<timestamp>[^\]]*)\] "(?P<method>[^ ]*) ?(?P<url>[^ ]*) ?(?P<protocol>[^"]*)" (?P<status>[^ ]*) (?P<bytes_sent>[^ ]*) "(?P<referer>[^"]*)" "(?P<user_agent>[^"]*)" (?<duration>[0-9\.]+)', true)


      if err == null {
        .remote_addr = match.remote_addr
        .user = match.user
        .timestamp = parse_timestamp(match.timestamp, "%d/%b/%Y:%H:%M:%S %z") ?? match.timestamp
        .request = match.request
        .method = match.method
        .url = match.url
        .protocol = match.protocol
        .status, err = to_int(match.status)
        .bytes_sent, err = to_int(match.bytes_sent)
        .referer = match.referer
        .user_agent = match.user_agent
        .duration, err = to_float(match.duration)
        del(.message)
      } else {
        log("Failed to parse log line: " + err, level: "error")
      }
```

---

## Try Honeybadger for FREE

Intelligent logging, error tracking, and Just Enough APM™ in one dev-friendly platform. Find and fix problems before users notice.

[Start free trial](https://app.honeybadger.io/users/sign_up)

[See plans and pricing](https://www.honeybadger.io/plans/)