Search Reference

transaction

Description

The transaction command finds transactions based on events that meet various constraints. Transactions are made up of the raw text (the _raw field) of each member, the time and date fields of the earliest member, as well as the union of all other fields of each member.

Additionally, the transaction command adds two fields to the raw events, duration and eventcount. The duration value is the difference between the timestamps for the first and last events in the transaction. The eventcount value is the number of events in the transaction.

Read more about transactions in the Search Manual.

Syntax

transaction [<field-list>] [name=<transaction-name>] [<txn_definition-options>...] [<memcontrol-options>...] [<rendering-options>...]

Required arguments

None.

Optional arguments

field-list

Syntax: <field> ...

Description: One field or more field names. The events are grouped into transactions based on the values of this field. If a quoted list of fields is specified, events are grouped together if they have the same value for each of the fields.

memcontrol-options

Syntax: <maxopentxn> | <maxopenevents> | <keepevicted>

Description: These options control the memory usage for your transactions. They are not required, but you can use 0 or more of the options to define your transaction.

name

Syntax: name=<transaction-name>

Description: Specify the stanza name of a transaction that is configured in the transactiontypes.conf file. This runs the search using the settings defined in this stanza of the configuration file. If you provide other transaction definition options (such as maxspan) in this search, they overrule the settings in the configuration file.

rendering-options

Syntax: <delim> | <mvlist> | <mvraw> | <nullstr>

Description: These options control the multivalue rendering for your transactions. They are not required, but you can use 0 or more of the options to define your transaction.

txn_definition-options

Syntax: <maxspan> | <maxpause> | <maxevents> | <startswith> | <endswith> | <connected> | <unifyends> | <keeporphans>

Description: Specify the transaction definition options to define your transactions. You can use multiple options to define your transaction.

Txn definition options

connected

Syntax: connected=<bool>

Description: Only relevant if a field or fields list is specified. If an event contains fields required by the transaction, but none of these fields have been instantiated in the transaction (added with a previous event), this opens a new transaction (connected=t) or adds the event to the transaction (connected=f).

endswith

Syntax: endswith=<string>

Description: A search or eval expression which, if satisfied by an event, marks the end of a transaction.

keeporphans

Syntax: keeporphans=true | false

Description: Specify whether the transaction command should output the results that are not part of any transactions. The results that are passed through as "orphans" are distinguished from transaction events with a _txn_orphan field, which has a value of 1 for orphan results.

Default: false

maxspan

Syntax: maxspan=<int>[s | m | h | d]

Description: Specifies the maximum length of time in seconds, minutes, hours, or days that the events can span. The events in the transaction must span less than integer specified for maxspan. If the value is negative, maxspan is disabled and there is no limit.

Default: -1 (no limit)

maxpause

Syntax: maxpause=<int>[s | m | h | d]

Description: Specifies the maximum time in seconds, minutes, hours, or days that the events can span. The maxpause constraint requires there be no pause between a transaction's events of greater than maxpause. If value is negative, disable the maxpause constraint.

Default: -1 (no limit)

maxevents

Syntax: maxevents=<int>

Description: The maximum number of events in a transaction. If the value is negative this constraint is disabled.

Default: 1000

startswith

Syntax: startswith=<filter-string>

Description: A search or eval filtering expression which if satisfied by an event marks the beginning of a new transaction.

unifyends

Syntax: unifyends= true | false

Description: Whether to force events that match startswith/endswith constraint(s) to also match at least one of the fields used to unify events into a transaction.

Default: false

Filter string options

<filter-string>

Syntax: <search-expression> | (<quoted-search-expression>) | eval(<eval-expression>)

Description: A search or eval filtering expression which if satisfied by an event marks the end of a transaction.

<search-expression>

Description: A valid search expression that does not contain quotes.

<quoted-search-expression>

Description: A valid search expression that contains quotes.

<eval-expression>

Description: A valid eval expression that evaluates to a Boolean.

Memory constraint options

keepevicted

Syntax: keepevicted=<bool>

Description: Whether to output evicted transactions. Evicted transactions can be distinguished from non-evicted transactions by checking the value of the 'closed_txn' field, which is set to '0' for evicted transactions and '1' for closed ones. 'closed_txn' is set to '1' if one of the following conditions is hit: maxevents, maxpause, maxspan, startswith (for this last one, because transaction sees events in reverse time order, it closes a transaction when it satisfies the start condition). If none of these conditions is specified, all transactions will be output even though all transactions will have 'closed_txn' set to '0'. A transaction can also be evicted when the memory limitations are reached.

maxopenevents

Syntax: maxopenevents=<int>

Description: Specifies the maximum number of events (which are) part of open transactions before transaction eviction starts happening, using LRU policy. The default value of this field is read from the transactions stanza in the .limits.conf file

maxopentxn

Syntax: maxopentxn=<int>

Description: Specifies the maximum number of not yet closed transactions to keep in the open pool before starting to evict transactions, using LRU policy. The default value of this field is read from the transactions stanza in the limits.conf file.

Multivalue rendering options

delim

Syntax: delim=<string>

Description: Specify a character to separate multiple values. When used in conjunction with mvraw=t, represents a string used to delimit the values of _raw.

Default: " " (whitespace)

mvlist

Syntax: mvlist= true | false | <field-list>

Description: Flag that controls whether the multivalued fields of the transaction are (mvlist=t) a list of the original events ordered in arrival order or (mvlist=f) a set of unique field values ordered alphabetically. If a comma or/space delimited list of fields is provided, only those fields are rendered as lists.

Default: false

mvraw

Syntax: mvraw=<bool>

Description: Used to specify whether the _raw field of the transaction search result should be a multivalued field.

Default: false

nullstr

Syntax: nullstr=<string>

Description: A string value to use when rendering missing field values as part of multivalued fields in a transaction. This option applies only to fields that are rendered as lists.

Default: NULL

Usage

Specifying multiple fields

The Splunk software does not necessarily interpret the transaction defined by multiple fields as a conjunction (field1 AND field2 AND field3) or a disjunction (field1 OR field2 OR field3) of those fields. If there is a transitive relationship between the fields in the fields list and if the related events appear in the correct sequence, each with a different timestamp, transaction command will try to use it. For example, if you searched for

... | transaction host cookie

You might see the following events grouped into a transaction:

event=1 host=a
event=2 host=a cookie=b
event=3 cookie=b

Basic Examples

1. Transactions with the same host, time range, and pause

Group search results that that have the same host and cookie value, occur within 30 seconds, and do not have a pause of more than 5 seconds between the events.

... | transaction host cookie maxspan=30s maxpause=5s

2. Transactions with the same "from" value, time range, and pause

Group search results that have the same value of "from", with a maximum span of 30 seconds, and a pause between events no greater than 5 seconds into a transaction.

... | transaction from maxspan=30s maxpause=5s

3. Transactions with the same field values

You have events that include an alert_level. You want to create transactions where the level is equal. Using the streamstats command, you can remember the value of the alert level for the current and previous event. Using the transaction command, you can create a new transaction if the alert level is different. Output specific fields to table.

... | streamstats window=2 current=t last(alert_level) AS last first(alert_level) AS first | transaction endswith=eval(first!=last) | table _time duration first last alert_level eventcount

Extended Examples

1. Transactions of Web access events based on IP address

This example uses the sample dataset from the Search Tutorial. Download the data set from this topic in the tutorial and follow the instructions to upload it to Splunk. Then, run this search using the time range, Other > Yesterday.

Define a transaction based on Web access events that share the same IP address. The first and last events in the transaction should be no more than thirty seconds apart and each event should not be longer than five seconds apart.

sourcetype=access_* | transaction clientip maxspan=30s maxpause=5s

This produces the following events list:

This search groups events together based on the IP addresses accessing the server and the time constraints. The search results may have multiple values for some fields, such as host and source. For example, requests from a single IP could come from multiple hosts if multiple people were shopping from the same office. For more information, read the topic "About transactions" in the Knowledge Manager manual.

2. Transaction of Web access events based on host and client IP

This example uses the sample dataset from the Search Tutorial. Download the data set from this topic in the tutorial and follow the instructions to upload it to Splunk. Then, run this search using the time range, Other > Yesterday.

Define a transaction based on Web access events that have a unique combination of host and clientip values. The first and last events in the transaction should be no more than thirty seconds apart and each event should not be longer than five seconds apart.

sourcetype=access_* | transaction clientip host maxspan=30s maxpause=5s

This produces the following events list:

In contrast to the transaction in Example 1, each of these events have a distinct combination of the IP address (clientip values) and host values within the limits of the time constraints. Thus, you should not see different values of host or clientip addresses among the events in a single transaction.

3. Purchase transactions based on IP address and time range

This example uses the sample dataset from the Search Tutorial. Download the data set from this topic in the tutorial and follow the instructions to upload it to Splunk. Then, run this search using the time range, Other > Yesterday.

Define a purchase transaction as 3 events from one IP address which occur in a ten minute span of time.

sourcetype=access_* action=purchase | transaction clientip maxspan=10m maxevents=3

This search defines a purchase event based on Web access events that have the action=purchase value. These results are then piped into the transaction command. This search identifies purchase transactions by events that share the same clientip, where each session lasts no longer than 10 minutes, and includes no more than three events.

This produces the following events list:

This above results show the same IP address appearing from different host domains.

4. Email transactions based on maxevents and endswith

This example uses generated email data (sourcetype=cisco_esa). You should be able to run this example on any email data by replacing the sourcetype=cisco_esa with your data's sourcetype value.

Define an email transaction as a group of up to 10 events each containing the same value for the mid (message ID), icid (incoming connection ID), and dcid (delivery connection ID) and with the last event in the transaction containing a "Message done" string.

sourcetype="cisco_esa" | transaction mid dcid icid maxevents=10 endswith="Message done"

This produces the following events list:

Here, you can see that each transaction has no more than ten events. Also, the last event includes the string, "Message done" in the event line.

5. Email transactions based on maxevents, maxspan, and mvlist

This example uses generated email data (sourcetype=cisco_esa). You should be able to run this example on any email data by replacing the sourcetype=cisco_esa with your data's sourcetype value.

Define an email transaction as a group of up to 10 events each containing the same value for the mid (message ID), icid (incoming connection ID), and dcid (delivery connection ID). The first and last events in the transaction should be no more than five seconds apart and each transaction should have no more than ten events.

sourcetype="cisco_esa" | transaction mid dcid icid maxevents=10 maxspan=5s mvlist=t

By default, the values of multivalue fields are suppressed in search results (mvlist=f). Specifying mvlist=t in this search tells Splunk to display all the values of the selected fields. This produces the following events list:

Here you can see that each transaction has a duration that is less than five seconds. Also, if there is more than one value for a field, each of the values is listed.

6. Transactions with the same session ID and IP address

This example uses the sample dataset from the Search Tutorial. Download the data set from this topic in the tutorial and follow the instructions to upload it to Splunk. Then, run this search using the time range, All time.

Define a transaction as a group of events that have the same session ID (JSESSIONID) and come from the same IP address (clientip) and where the first event contains the string, "signon", and the last event contains the string, "purchase".

sourcetype=access_* | transaction JSESSIONID clientip startswith="*signon*" endswith="purchase" | where duration>0

The search defines the first event in the transaction as events that include the string, "signon", using the startswith="*signon*" argument. The endswith="purchase" argument does the same for the last event in the transaction.

This example then pipes the transactions into the where command and the duration field to filter out all the transactions that took less than a second to complete:

You might be curious about why the transactions took a long time, so viewing these events may help you to troubleshoot. You won't see it in this data, but some transactions may take a long time because the user is updating and removing items from his shopping cart before he completes the purchase.

See also

stats, concurrency

Answers

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