StartQuery

Starts a query of one or more log groups using CloudWatch Logs Insights. You specify the log groups and time range to query and the query string to use.

For more information, see CloudWatch Logs Insights Query Syntax.

After you run a query using StartQuery, the query results are stored by CloudWatch Logs. You can use GetQueryResults to retrieve the results of a query, using the queryId that StartQuery returns.

If you have associated a AWS KMS key with the query results in this account, then StartQuery uses that key to encrypt the results when it stores them. If no key is associated with query results, the query results are encrypted with the default CloudWatch Logs encryption method.

Queries time out after 60 minutes of runtime. If your queries are timing out, reduce the time range being searched or partition your query into a number of queries.

If you are using CloudWatch cross-account observability, you can use this operation in a monitoring account to start a query in a linked source account. For more information, see CloudWatch cross-account observability. For a cross-account StartQuery operation, the query definition must be defined in the monitoring account.

You can have up to 30 concurrent CloudWatch Logs insights queries, including queries that have been added to dashboards.

Request Syntax

{
   "endTime": number,
   "limit": number,
   "logGroupIdentifiers": [ "string" ],
   "logGroupName": "string",
   "logGroupNames": [ "string" ],
   "queryString": "string",
   "startTime": number
}

Request Parameters

For information about the parameters that are common to all actions, see Common Parameters.

The request accepts the following data in JSON format.

Response Syntax

{
   "queryId": "string"
}

Response Elements

If the action is successful, the service sends back an HTTP 200 response.

The following data is returned in JSON format by the service.

Errors

For information about the errors that are common to all actions, see Common Errors.

Examples

Example: Start a query

This example starts a query of three log groups, specifying the query string and start time. It also limits the results to the most recent 100 matching events.

Sample Request

POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: logs.<region>.<domain>
X-Amz-Date: <DATE>
Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=<Credential>, SignedHeaders=content-type;date;host;user-agent;x-amz-date;x-amz-target;x-amzn-requestid, Signature=<Signature>
User-Agent: <UserAgentString>
Accept: application/json
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1
Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes>
Connection: Keep-Alive
X-Amz-Target: Logs_20140328.StartQuery
{
    "limit": 100,
    "logGroupNames": [
        "LogGroupName1",
        "LogGroupName2",
        "LogGroupName3"
    ],
    "queryString": "stats count(*) by eventSource, eventName, awsRegion",
    "startTime": 1546300800,
    "endTime": 1546309800
}

Sample Response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
x-amzn-RequestId: <RequestId>
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1
Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes>
Date: <Date>
{
   "queryId": "12ab3456-12ab-123a-789e-1234567890ab"
}

Example: Start a query

This example starts a query for a log group ARN and specifies a query string. It also specifies the request start and end times.

Sample Request

{
    "limit": 100,
    "logGroupIdentifiers": [
        "arn:aws:logs:us-east-1:123456789012:log-group:monitoring-logGroup-1234"
     ],
    "queryString": "stats count(*) by eventSource, eventName, awsRegion",
    "startTime": 1546300800,
    "endTime": 1546309800
}

Sample Response

{
    "queryId": "12ab3456-12ab-123a-789e-1234567890ab"
}

Example: Start a query using field indexing and the source command

This example queries all log groups in the 111122223333 account that have log group names that start with my-log. It leverages field indexing so that only log groups and log events known to match the indexed field transactionId are processed. Only log events that include the value tx-001 for the transactionId field will be returned.

Sample Request

POST / HTTP/1.1
Host: logs.<region>.<domain>
X-Amz-Date: <DATE>
Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=<Credential>, SignedHeaders=content-type;date;host;user-agent;x-amz-date;x-amz-target;x-amzn-requestid, Signature=<Signature>
User-Agent: <UserAgentString>
Accept: application/json
Content-Type: application/x-amz-json-1.1
Content-Length: <PayloadSizeBytes>
Connection: Keep-Alive
X-Amz-Target: Logs_20140328.StartQuery
{
 "queryString": 
  "source logGroups(namePrefix: ['my-log'], accountIdentifiers: ['accountId' = '111122223333'])
 | filterIndex transactionId = 'tx-001'",
    "startTime": 1722704400000,
    "endTime": 1722705229849
}

See Also

For more information about using this API in one of the language-specific AWS SDKs, see the following: