Parses dates from fields, and then uses the date or timestamp as the timestamp for the document. By default, the date processor adds the parsed date as a new field called @timestamp. You can specify a different field by setting the target_field configuration parameter. Multiple date formats are supported as part of the same date processor definition. They will be used sequentially to attempt parsing the date field, in the same order they were defined as part of the processor definition.

Here is an example that adds the parsed date to the timestamp field based on the initial_date field:

{
  "description" : "...",
  "processors" : [
    {
      "date" : {
        "field" : "initial_date",
        "target_field" : "timestamp",
        "formats" : ["dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss"],
        "timezone" : "Europe/Amsterdam"
      }
    }
  ]
}

The timezone and locale processor parameters are templated. This means that their values can be extracted from fields within documents. The example below shows how to extract the locale/timezone details from existing fields, my_timezone and my_locale, in the ingested document that contain the timezone and locale values.

{
  "description" : "...",
  "processors" : [
    {
      "date" : {
        "field" : "initial_date",
        "target_field" : "timestamp",
        "formats" : ["ISO8601"],
        "timezone" : "{{my_timezone}}",
        "locale" : "{{my_locale}}"
      }
    }
  ]
}