Splunk® Enterprise

Search Reference

Splunk Enterprise version 7.0 is no longer supported as of October 23, 2019. See the Splunk Software Support Policy for details. For information about upgrading to a supported version, see How to upgrade Splunk Enterprise.
This documentation does not apply to the most recent version of Splunk® Enterprise. For documentation on the most recent version, go to the latest release.

Time functions

earliest(X)

Description

Returns the chronologically earliest seen occurrence of a value of a field X.

Usage

  • This function processes field values as strings.
  • You can use the earliest(X) function with the chart, stats, and timechart commands.

Basic example

This example uses the sample data from the Search Tutorial. To try this example on your own Splunk instance, you must download the sample data and follow the instructions to get the tutorial data into Splunk. Use the time range All time when you run the search.

You run the following search to locate invalid user login attempts against a sshd (Secure Shell Daemon). You use the table command to see the values in the _time, source, and _raw fields.

sourcetype=secure invalid user "sshd[5258]" | table _time source _raw


The results appear on the Statistics tab and look something like this:

_time source _raw
2018-04-28 00:15:05 tutorialdata.zip:./mailsv/secure.log Mon Apr 28 2018 00:15:05 mailsv1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user tomcat from 67.170.226.218 port 1490 ssh2
2018-05-01 00:15:04 tutorialdata.zip:./www2/secure.log Thu May 01 2018 00:15:04 www2 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user brian from 130.253.37.97 port 4284 ssh2
2018-04-30 00:15:02 tutorialdata.zip:./www3/secure.log Wed Apr 30 2018 00:15:02 www3 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user operator from 222.169.224.226 port 1711 ssh2
2018-04-28 00:15:01 tutorialdata.zip:./www1/secure.log Mon Apr 28 2018 00:15:01 www1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user rightscale from 87.194.216.51 port 3361 ssh2
2018-05-01 00:15:05 tutorialdata.zip:./mailsv/secure.log Thu May 01 2018 00:15:05 mailsv1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user testuser from 194.8.74.23 port 3626 ssh2
2018-04-27 00:15:01 tutorialdata.zip:./www1/secure.log Sun Apr 27 2018 00:15:01 www1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user redmine from 91.208.184.24 port 3587 ssh2

You extend the search using the earliest function.

sourcetype=secure invalid user "sshd[5258]" | table _time source _raw | stats earliest(_raw)

The search returns the event with the _time value 2018-04-27 00:15:01, which is the event with the oldest timestamp.

_time source _raw
2018-04-27 00:15:01 tutorialdata.zip:./www1/secure.log Sun Apr 27 2018 00:15:01 www1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user redmine from 91.208.184.24 port 3587 ssh2

latest(X)

Description

Returns the chronologically latest seen occurrence of a value of a field X.

Usage

This function processes field values as strings.

You can use the latest(X) function with the chart, stats, and timechart commands.

Basic example

This example uses the sample data from the Search Tutorial. To try this example on your own Splunk instance, you must download the sample data and follow the instructions to get the tutorial data into Splunk. Use the time range All time when you run the search.

You run the following search to locate invalid user login attempts against a specific sshd (Secure Shell Daemon). You use the table command to see the values in the _time, source, and _raw fields.

sourcetype=secure invalid user "sshd[5258]" | table _time source _raw


The results appear on the Statistics tab and look something like this:

_time source _raw
2018-04-28 00:15:05 tutorialdata.zip:./mailsv/secure.log Mon Apr 28 2018 00:15:05 mailsv1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user tomcat from 67.170.226.218 port 1490 ssh2
2018-05-01 00:15:04 tutorialdata.zip:./www2/secure.log Thu May 01 2018 00:15:04 www2 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user brian from 130.253.37.97 port 4284 ssh2
2018-04-30 00:15:02 tutorialdata.zip:./www3/secure.log Wed Apr 30 2018 00:15:02 www3 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user operator from 222.169.224.226 port 1711 ssh2
2018-04-28 00:15:01 tutorialdata.zip:./www1/secure.log Mon Apr 28 2018 00:15:01 www1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user rightscale from 87.194.216.51 port 3361 ssh2
2018-05-01 00:15:05 tutorialdata.zip:./mailsv/secure.log Thu May 01 2018 00:15:05 mailsv1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user testuser from 194.8.74.23 port 3626 ssh2
2018-04-27 00:15:01 tutorialdata.zip:./www1/secure.log Sun Apr 27 2018 00:15:01 www1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user redmine from 91.208.184.24 port 3587 ssh2

You extend the search using the latest function.

sourcetype=secure invalid user "sshd[5258]" | table _time source _raw | stats latest(_raw)

The search returns the event with the _time value 2018-05-01 00:15:05, which is the event with the most recent timestamp.

_time source _raw
2018-05-01 00:15:05 tutorialdata.zip:./mailsv/secure.log Thu May 01 2018 00:15:05 mailsv1 sshd[5258]: Failed password for invalid user testuser from 194.8.74.23 port 3626 ssh2

per_day(X)

Description

Returns the values of field X, or eval expression X, for each day.

Usage

  • You can use the per_day(X) function with the timechart command.

Basic examples

The following example returns the values for the field total for each day.

... | timechart per_day(total)

The following example returns the results of the eval expression eval(method="GET")) AS Views .

... | timechart per_day(eval(method="GET")) AS Views

Extended example

This example uses the sample dataset from the Search Tutorial but should work with any format of Apache Web access log. Download the data set from this topic in the Search Tutorial and follow the instructions to upload it to your Splunk deployment.

This search uses the per_day() function and eval expressions to determine how many times the web pages were viewed and how many times items were purchased. The results appear on the Statistics tab.

sourcetype=access_* | timechart per_day(eval(method="GET")) AS Views_day, per_day(eval(action="purchase")) AS Purchases

To determine the number of Views and Purchases for each hour, minute, or second you can add the other time functions to the search. For example:

sourcetype=access_* | timechart per_day(eval(method="GET")) AS Views_day, per_hour(eval(method="GET")) AS Views_hour, per_minute(eval(method="GET")) AS Views_minute, per_day(eval(action="purchase")) AS Purchases

This screen image shows the result of the search. There are five columns. first column contains dates, based on the event timestamps. The next column shows the number of views for each day. The third column shows the number of views for each hour. The forth column shows the number of views for each minute. The last column shows the number of purchases for each day.

per_hour(X)

Description

Returns the values of field X, or eval expression X, for each hour.

Usage

  • You can use the per_hour(X) function with the timechart command.

Basic examples

The following example returns the values for the field total for each hour.

... | timechart per_hour(total)

The following example returns the the results of the eval expression eval(method="POST")) AS Views .

... | timechart per_hour(eval(method="POST")) AS Views

per_minute(X)

Description

Returns the values of field X, or eval expression X, for each minute.

Usage

  • You can use the per_minute(X) function with the timechart command.

Basic examples

The following example returns the values for the field total for each minute.

... | timechart per_minute(total)

The following example returns the the results of the eval expression eval(method="GET")) AS Views .

... | timechart per_minute(eval(method="GET")) AS Views

per_second(X)

Description

Returns the values of field X, or eval expression X, for each second.

Usage

  • You can use the per_second(X) function with the timechart command.

Basic examples

The following example returns the values for the field kb for each second.

... | timechart per_second(kb)

Last modified on 11 October, 2018
Multivalue stats and chart functions   Date and time format variables

This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk® Enterprise: 7.0.0, 7.0.1, 7.0.2, 7.0.3, 7.0.4, 7.0.5, 7.0.6, 7.0.7, 7.0.8, 7.0.9, 7.0.10, 7.0.11, 7.0.13

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