The reason the regex fails is because the regex does not use named groups. The script doesn't know which group is the 'date' group (as well as all the other required groups).

I'll run some tests to see if the script will work when supplying logs via stdin. If not, I'll see if I can get it to work.

@kevinjc I modified the importer so logs in the W3C extended log file format can be imported from stdin. To do this, run the script with the --log-format-name=w3c_extended option, eg:

cat myw3clogs.log | ./misc/log-analytics/import_logs.py --url=http://localhost/ --log-format-name=w3c_extended -

Copied latest and ran quick test with the following error:
Parsing log (stdin)...
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/tools/piwik/scripts/import_logs.py.new", line 1916, in
main()
File "/tools/piwik/scripts/import_logs.py.new", line 1887, in main
parser.parse(filename)
File "/tools/piwik/scripts/import_logs.py.new", line 1719, in parse
match = format.match(line)
File "/tools/piwik/scripts/import_logs.py.new", line 178, in match
self.matched = self.regex.match(line)
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'match'

Using the following configuration in the wrapper script:
exec python /tools/piwik/scripts/import_logs.py.new
-snipped-
-dd \

--log-format-name=w3c_extended --w3c-time-taken-millisecs \

@kevinjc I recognize the error and it shouldn't occur w/ the code in master... Can you provide an example log file w/ one or two log lines (please include the #Fields: line)?

I cannot count on the #Fields line to be present when it runs since it is a constant stream from the syslog-ng collector. This is one of the reasons why I was thinking I needed to pursue the regex option. I'm happy not to (use regex) if that is possible!

Note: I have turned off a few of the fields but I can re-enable them if it is necessary:
#Software: Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0
#Version: 1.0
#Date: 2015-01-12 04:30:32
#Fields: date time cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query cs-username c-ip cs(User-Agent) cs(Referer) cs-host sc-status sc-bytes time-taken
2015-01-12 04:30:32 GET /bananas otherfruits+vegetables - 192.168.86.240 Mozilla/5.0+(Windows+NT+6.1;+WOW64;+rv:31.0)+Gecko/20100101+Firefox/31.0 https://test2.testserver.local/INTRO/? my.testserver.local 200 4522 968

I now have snippet of logs with the commented lines to run for testing. It gets closer but now I am getting a 500 error on import from my Apache server running piwik. Is this because it has not updated to 2.10.0? Is this version required? I thought the import_logs.py was a little more independent of the version on the server, but that just may have been an assumption on my part.
Error on server is:
[Mon Jan 12 15:02:03 2015] [error] [client 192.168.99.30] PHP Fatal error: Class 'Piwik\DataTable\Renderer\Json2' not found in /application/piwik/core/DataTable/Renderer.php on line 203

I cannot count on the #Fields line to be present when it runs since it is a constant stream from the syslog-ng collector. This is one of the reasons why I was thinking I needed to pursue the regex option. I'm happy not to (use regex) if that is possible!

The #Fields line is necessary in order to build the regex used to parse log lines... You could get away w/ supplying a regex, but this approach is more error prone; small mistakes in the regex can cause problems that are hard to diagnose. I think I can create a middle ground, however. I'll add a new option --w3c-fields so you can specify the fields format in the log importer command.

Is this because it has not updated to 2.10.0? Is this version required? I thought the import_logs.py was a little more independent of the version on the server, but that just may have been an assumption on my part.

This is the intent, however, changes made to Piwik's reporting and tracking APIs (both of which the log importer depends on) can create incompatibilities between log importer and Piwik versions. It is of course recommended to update to the newest available version, but you can work around this specific error by changing line 1028 to 'format' : 'json', (maybe. It's possible the bugs this change fixed in Piwik core will cause other problems for the newest importer).

@kevinjc You should be able to import logs w/o the '#Fields:' line w/ the following options:

--log-format-name=w3c_extended --w3c-time-taken-millisecs --w3c-fields='#Fields: date time cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query cs-username c-ip cs(User-Agent) cs(Referer) cs-host sc-status sc-bytes time-taken'