Include Kubernetes metadata like HTTPRoute name, namespace, etc.. in access logs

[yohanAnushka]

Hi all 🙋🏾,
I am coming from ingress-nginx to nginx-gateway-fabric and noticed that there isn't a way to log certain Kubernetes metadata like the name of the HTTPRoute that is responsible for the access log, its namespace amongst other things.

The reason I am wondering about this is, back in the ingress-nginx days, I used below log variable to identify and filter out logs depending on which ingress resource was responsible for the given request/traffic.

1. $namespace
2. $service_name
3. $service_port

And my log format looked something like below.

{
  "logtime": "$time_local",
  "ssl_protocol": "$ssl_protocol",
  "ssl_cipher": "$ssl_cipher",
  "request_id": "$req_id",
  ......
  "status": "$status",
  "service": {
    "ingress_namespace": "$namespace",
    "service_name": "$service_name",
    "service_port": "$service_port"
  },
  "geoip": {
    "country_code": "$geoip2_country_code",
    "city": "$geoip2_city",
    "postal_code": "$geoip2_postal_code",
    "latitude": "$geoip2_latitude",
    "geoip_longitude": "$geoip2_longitude"
  }
}

I went through as much documentation as I could for the Gateway Fabric but could not find an equivalent configuration or a set of variables that can output similar information. Have I missed something in the documentation or is this something not implemented in the Gateway Fabric?

Thank you!

[ciarams87]

Hi @yohanAnushka!

Thanks so much for your interest in our project!

We do not have support for this today like in ingress-nginx, this issue has some ideas of how similar functionality could be configured.

The TL/DR of the linked issue:

• Although we don't support this directly, you do have some options to customise the logs using a SnippetsFilter or SnippetsPolicy to define the variables yourself, and then either define a custom log in that SnippetsFilter, or use our global logging config.
• Alternatively enabling tracing may fit your use case. You can add attributes (like the route name) for routes that originate traces. Here is a blog post about tracing that may be helpful.

Hopefully one of these paths can work for you!

Please let me know if you require any further help!

[yohanAnushka]

Thanks @ciarams87, I will checkout the two approaches you suggested. Appreciate it :)