Structured logging involves directly writing JSON objects from applications to avoid the need for parsing logs into JSON via regular expressions, thus facilitating efficient indexing into Elasticsearch. This approach is exemplified in Python using the structlog library, which simplifies log statements and encourages comprehensive data inclusion. Although structured logs are less human-readable, they are well-suited for Elasticsearch's search and aggregation capabilities. Filebeat, an open-source log shipper, can send structured logs to Logstash and Elasticsearch, offering "at-least-once" delivery guarantees and features like native JSON decoding, basic filtering, and metadata addition. It simplifies log processing by automatically adding timestamps and metadata such as host names, allowing applications to focus on generating essential log data without worrying about environmental metadata.