fields.conf

The following are the spec and example files for fields.conf.

fields.conf.spec

   Version 8.1.0

OVERVIEW

 This file contains possible attribute and value pairs for:
  * Telling Splunk how to handle multi-value fields.
  * Distinguishing indexed and extracted fields.
  * Improving search performance by telling the search processor how to
    handle field values.

 Each stanza controls different search commands settings.

 There is a fields.conf file in the $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default/ directory.
 Never change or copy the configuration files in the default directory.
 The files in the default directory must remain intact and in their original
 location.

 To set custom configurations, create a new file with the name fields.conf in
 the $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/ directory. Then add the specific settings
 that you want to customize to the local configuration file.
 For examples, see fields.conf.example.
 You must restart the Splunk instance to enable configuration changes.

 To learn more about configuration files (including file precedence) see the
 documentation located at
 http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Admin/Aboutconfigurationfiles

GLOBAL SETTINGS

 Use the [default] stanza to define any global settings.
   * You can also define global settings outside of any stanza, at the top of
     the file.
   * Each conf file should have at most one default stanza. If there are
     multiple default stanzas, attributes are combined. In the case of
     multiple definitions of the same attribute, the last definition in the
     file wins.
   * If an attribute is defined at both the global level and in a specific
     stanza, the value in the specific stanza takes precedence.

[<field name>|sourcetype::<sourcetype>::<wildcard expression>]

* The name of the field that you are configuring. This can be a simple field name,
  or it can be a wildcard expression that is scoped to a source type.
* Field names can contain only "a-z", "A-Z", "0-9", "." , ":", and "_". They
  cannot begin with a number or "_".
  Field names cannot begin with a number "0-9" or an underscore "_".
* Wildcard expressions have the same limitations as field names, but they can
  also contain and/or start with a *.
* Do not create indexed fields with names that collide with names of fields
  that are extracted at search time.
* A source-type-scoped wildcard expression causes all indexed fields that match
  the wildcard expression to be scoped with the specified source type.
  * Apply source-type-scoped wildcard expressions to all fields associated with
    structured data source types, such as JSON-formatted data. Do not apply it
    to mixed datatypes that contain both structured and unstructured data.
  * When you apply this method to structured data fields, searches against
    those fields should complete faster.
  * Example: '[sourcetype::splunk_resource_usage::data*]' defines all fields
    starting with "data" as indexed fields for
    'sourcetype=splunk_resource_usage'.
  * The Splunk software processes source-type-scoped wildcard expressions
    before it processes source type aliases.
  * Source-type-scoped wildcard expressions require
  'indexed_fields_expansion = t' in limits.conf.
* Follow the stanza name with any number of the following attribute/value
  pairs.

 'TOKENIZER' enables you to indicate that a field value is a smaller part of a
 token. For example, your raw event has a field with the value "abc123", but
 you need this field to to be a multivalue field with both "abc" and "123" as
 values.
TOKENIZER = <regular expression>
* A regular expression that indicates how the field can take on multiple values
  at the same time.
* Use this setting to configure multivalue fields. Refer to the online
  documentation for multivalue fields.
* If empty, the field can only take on a single value.
* Otherwise, the first group is taken from each match to form the set of
  values.
* This setting is used by the "search" and "where" commands, the summary and
  XML outputs of the asynchronous search API, and by the "top", "timeline", and
  "stats" commands.
* Tokenization of indexed fields is not supported. If "INDEXED = true",
  the tokenizer attribute will be ignored.
* No default.

INDEXED = <boolean>
* Indicates whether a field is indexed.
* Set to "true" if the field is indexed.
* Set to "false" for fields extracted at search time. This accounts for the
  majority of fields.
* Default: false

INDEXED_VALUE = [true|false|<sed-cmd>|<simple-substitution-string>]
* Set to "true" if the value is in the raw text of the event.
* Set to "false" if the value is not in the raw text of the event.
* Setting this to "true" expands any search for "key=value"
  into a search for value AND key=value
  since value is indexed.
* For advanced customization, this setting supports sed style substitution.
  For example, 'INDEXED_VALUE=s/foo/bar/g'
  takes the value of the field, replaces all instances of 'foo' with 'bar,'
  and uses that new value as the value to search in the index.
* This setting also supports a simple substitution based on looking for the
  literal string '<VALUE>' (including the '<' and '>' characters).
  For example, 'INDEXED_VALUE=source::*<VALUE>*'
  takes a search for 'myfield=myvalue'
  and searches for 'source::*myvalue*'
  in the index as a single term.
* For both substitution constructs, if the resulting string starts with a '[',
  Splunk interprets the string as a Splunk LISPY expression.  For example,
  'INDEXED_VALUE=[OR <VALUE> source::*<VALUE>]'
  turns 'myfield=myvalue'
  into applying the LISPY expression '[OR myvalue source::*myvalue]'
  (meaning it matches either 'myvalue' or 'source::*myvalue' terms).
* NOTE: You only need to set 'indexed_value' if "indexed = false".
* Default: true

fields.conf.example

#   Version 8.1.0
#
# This file contains an example fields.conf.  Use this file to configure
# dynamic field extractions.
#
# To use one or more of these configurations, copy the configuration block into
# fields.conf in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/. You must restart Splunk to
# enable configurations.
#
# To learn more about configuration files (including precedence) please see the
# documentation located at
# http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Admin/Aboutconfigurationfiles
#
# These tokenizers result in the values of To, From and Cc treated as a list,
# where each list element is an email address found in the raw string of data.

[To]
TOKENIZER = (\w[\w\.\-]*@[\w\.\-]*\w)

[From]
TOKENIZER = (\w[\w\.\-]*@[\w\.\-]*\w)

[Cc]
TOKENIZER = (\w[\w\.\-]*@[\w\.\-]*\w)