Create source types
Contents
Create source types
You can create new source types in two ways:
- Use data preview in Splunk Web
- Edit the
props.confconfiguration file directly
Use data preview
Data preview provides an easy way to view the effects of applying a source type to your data and to make adjustments to the source type settings as necessary. You can save your changes as a new source type, which you can then assign to data inputs.
Data preview includes a UI for making the most common types of adjustments to timestamps and event breaks. For other modifications, it lets you edit the underlying props.conf file directly. As you change settings, you can immediately see the changes to the event data.
To learn more about data preview, read the topics in the chapter "Preview your data" in this manual.
Edit props.conf
You can create a new source type by editing props.conf and adding a new stanza. For detailed information on props.conf, read the props.conf specification in the Admin manual.
Edit the props.conf file in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/ or in your own custom application directory in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/apps/. For information on configuration files in general, see "About configuration files" in the Admin manual.
You can also create a new props.conf source type stanza directly from the Advanced mode tab in data preview. See the Advanced mode section in "Modify event processing" for details.
When you create a source type, you tell Splunk how to process the data to create searchable events. In particular, there are two key things that you need to specify:
- Event breaks. To learn how to use
props.confto specify event breaks, see "Configure event linebreaking". - Timestamps. To learn how to use
props.confto specify timestamps, see "Configure timestamp recognition", as well as other topics in the "Configure timestamps" chapter of this manual.
There are also a number of miscellaneous settings you can configure. See the props.conf specification for more information.
This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk: 4.3 , 4.3.1 , 4.3.2 , 4.3.3 , 4.3.4 , 4.3.5 , 4.3.6 , 5.0 , 5.0.1 , 5.0.2 , 5.0.3 View the Article History for its revisions.