# Nginx log time stamps customization

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-log-time-stamps-customization/225253>\
**Category:** NGINX\
**Created:** [December 24, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-log-time-stamps-customization/225253 "2012-12-24T16:28:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@aris](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/aris)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/nginx-log-time-stamps-customization/225253/1 "2012-12-24T16:28:22Z")

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Hello NGINX Dev team:

Hope you can help answer a simple question (I’ve gone through  
documentations  
and experimented with it and the answer seems no but hoping to get  
confimration from “the” authority on it).

I need to customize the time stamp for logging access logs in certain  
ways.  
Looking at the log module, I see that the nginx offers only two  
pre-configured formats, namely the $time\_local and $time\_iso8601  
formats. I  
was looking to avoid post-processing of the written logs by changing the  
log\_format directive at the nginx level which would have met out needs.

This would have also provided “built-in” log-rotation that we were  
looking  
to employ (given that file is opened and immediately closed) as well.

If this is the case of not RTFM (namely  
[http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpLogModule#log\_format](http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpLogModule#log_format)) then I apologies and  
hopefully I can be pointed to the propriate place(s).

Thanks and have a Happy Holidays!

Kalpesh…

Posted at Nginx Forum:

> **[nginx log time stamps customization](https://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,234391,234391#msg-234391)**
>
> Hello NGINX Dev team: Hope you can help answer a simple question (I've gone through documentations and experimented with it and the answer seems no but hoping to get confimration from "the" authority on it). I need to customize the time...