title: How can I drop an empty line in logstash
body: <p>In my logstash logs I have sometimes empty lines or lines with only spaces. </p>
  
  <p>To drop the empty line I created a dropemptyline filter file</p>
  
  <pre><code># drop empty lines
  filter {
      if [message] =~ /^\s*$/ {
          drop { }
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But the empty line filter is not working as expected, mainly because this particular filter is inside a chain other filters where there are filter coming afterwards afterwards. </p>
  
  <pre><code>00_input.conf
  05_syslogfilter.conf
  06_dropemptylines.conf
  07_classifier.conf
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So I think my particular filter would work if it was the only one but its not.</p>
  
  <pre><code>2015-02-11 15:02:12.347  WARN 1 --- [tp1812226644-23] o.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler   : 
  
  org.springframework.web.util.NestedServletException: Request processing failed; nested exception is org.springframework.dao.DataAccessResourceFailureException: Timed out after 10000 ms while waiting for a server that matches AnyServerSelector{}. Client view of cluster state is {type=Unknown, servers=[{address=mongo:27017, type=Unknown, state=Connecting, exception={com.mongodb.MongoException$Network: Exception opening the socket}, caused by {java.net.UnknownHostException: mongo: unknown error}}]; nested exception is com.mongodb.MongoTimeoutException: Timed out after 10000 ms while waiting for a server that matches AnyServerSelector{}. Client view of cluster state is {type=Unknown, servers=[{address=mongo:27017, type=Unknown, state=Connecting, exception={com.mongodb.MongoException$Network: Exception opening the socket}, caused by {java.net.UnknownHostException: mongo: unknown error}}]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My question is how can I drop out of all filters and go directly to output?</p>