Date and Time functions

The following list contains the functions that you can use to calculate dates and time.

For information about using string and numeric fields in functions, and nesting functions, see Evaluation functions.

In addition to the functions listed in this topic, there are also variables and modifiers that you can use in searches.

• Date and time format variables
• Time modifiers

now()

Description

This function takes no arguments and returns the time that the search was started.

Usage

The now() function is often used with other data and time functions.

The time returned by the now() function is represented in UNIX time, or in seconds since Epoch time.

When used in a search, this function returns the UNIX time when the search is run. If you want to return the UNIX time when each result is returned, use the time() function instead.

You can use this function with the eval, fieldformat, and where commands, and as part of eval expressions.

Basic example

The following example determines the UNIX time value of the start of yesterday, based on the value of now(). This example uses a "snap-to" time modifier to snap to the start of the day. See How to specify relative time modifiers.

... | eval n=relative_time(now(), "-1d@d")

Extended example

If you are looking for events that occurred within the last 30 minutes you need to calculate the event hour, event minute, the current hour, and the current minute. You use the now() function to calculate the current hour (curHour) and current minute (curMin). The event timestamp, in the _time field, is used to calculate the event hour (eventHour) and event minute (eventMin). For example:

... earliest=-30d | eval eventHour=strftime(_time,"%H") | eval eventMin=strftime(_time,"%M") | eval curHour=strftime(now(),"%H") | eval curMin=strftime(now(),"%M") | where (eventHour=curHour and eventMin > curMin - 30) or (curMin < 30 and eventHour=curHour-1 and eventMin>curMin+30) | bucket _time span=1d | chart count by _time

relative_time(<time>,<specifier>)

Description

This function takes a UNIX time as the first argument and a relative time specifier as the second argument and returns the UNIX time value of <specifier> applied to <time>.

Usage

You can use this function with the eval, fieldformat, and where commands, and as part of eval expressions.

Basic examples

The following example determines the UNIX time value of the start of yesterday, based on the value of now(). This example uses a "snap-to" time modifier to snap to the the start of the day. See How to specify relative time modifiers.

... | eval n=relative_time(now(), "-1d@d")

The following example specifies an earliest time of 2 hours ago snapped to the hour and a latest time of 1 hour ago snapped to the hour. The offset -2h is processed first, followed by the snap-to time @h.

... | where _time>relative_time(now(), "-2h@h") AND _time<relative_time(now(), "-1h@h")

strftime(<time>,<format>)

Description

This function takes a UNIX time value as the first argument and renders the time as a string using the format specified. The UNIX time must be in seconds. Use the first 10 digits of a UNIX time to use the time in seconds.

You can use time format variables with the strftime function. For a complete list and descriptions of the format options, see Date and time format variables.

Usage

If the time is in milliseconds, microseconds, or nanoseconds you must convert the time into seconds. You can use the pow function to convert the number.

• To convert from milliseconds to seconds, divide the number by 1000 or 10^3.
• To convert from microseconds to seconds, divide the number by 10^6.
• To convert from nanoseconds to seconds, divide the number by 10^9.

The following search uses the pow function to convert from nanoseconds to seconds:

| makeresults | eval StartTimestamp="1521467703049000000"| eval starttime=strftime(StartTimestamp/pow(10,9),"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%Q")

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

StartTimeStamp	_time	starttime
1521467703049000000	2018-08-10 09:04:00	2018-03-19T06:55:03.049

In these results, the _time value is the date and time when the search was run.

You can use this function with the eval, fieldformat, and where commands, and as part of eval expressions.

Basic examples

The following example returns the hour and minute from the _time field.

...| eval hour_min=strftime(_time, "%H:%M")

If the _time field value is 2022-08-10 11:48:23, the value returned in the hour_min field is 11:48.

The following example creates a new field called starttime in your search results. For the strftimevalues, the now() function is used to generate the current UNIX time and date and time variables are used to specify the ISO 8601 timestamp format;

...| eval starttime=strftime(now(),"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%Q")

The results look something like this:

_starttime
2022-02-11T01:55:00.000

For more information about date and time variables, see Date and time format variables.

Extended example

The following example creates a single result using the makeresults command.

| makeresults

For example:

_time
2022-08-14 14:00:15

The _time field is stored in UNIX time, even though it displays in a human readable format. To convert the UNIX time to some other format, you use the strftime function with the date and time format variables. The variables must be in quotations marks.

For example, to return the week of the year that an event occurred in, use the %V variable.

| makeresults | eval week=strftime(_time,"%V")

The results show that August 14th occurred in week 33.

_time	week
2022-08-14 14:00:15	33

To return the date and time with subseconds and the time designator (the letter T) that precedes the time components of the format, use the %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%Q variables. For example:

| makeresults | eval mytime=strftime(_time,"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%Q")

The results are:

_time	mytime
2022-08-14 14:00:15	2022-08-14T14:00:15.000

strptime(<str>,<format>)

Description

This function takes a time represented by a string and parses the time into a UNIX timestamp format. You use date and time variables to specify the format that matches string. For a complete list and descriptions of the variables, see Date and time format variables.

The strptime function doesn't work with timestamps that consist of only a month and year. The timestamps must include a day.

For example, if string X is 2022-08-13 11:22:33, the format Y must be %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S . The string X date must be January 1, 1971 or later. The strptime function takes any date from January 1, 1971 or later, and calculates the UNIX time, in seconds, from January 1, 1970 to the date you provide.

The _time field is in UNIX time. In Splunk Web, the _time field appears in a human readable format in the UI but is stored in UNIX time. If you attempt to use the strptime function on the _time field, no action is performed on the values in the field.

Usage

With the strptime function, you must specify the time format of the string so that the function can convert the string time into the correct UNIX time. The following table shows some examples:

String time	Matching time format variables
Mon July 23 2022 17:19:01.89	%a %B %d %Y %H:%M:%S.%N
Mon 7/23/2022 17:19:01.89	%a %m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S.%N
2022/07/23 17:19:01.89	%Y/%m/%d %H:%M:%S.%N
2022-07-23T17:19:01.89	%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%N

You can use this function with the eval, fieldformat, and where commands, and as part of eval expressions.

Basic example

If the values in the timeStr field are hours and minutes, such as 11:59, the following example returns the time as a timestamp:

... | eval n=strptime(timeStr, "%H:%M")

Extended example

This example shows the results of using the strptime function. The following search does several things:

• The gentimes command generates a set of times with 6 hour intervals. This command returns four fields: startime, starthuman, endtime, and endhuman.
• The fields command returns only the starthuman and endhuman fields.
• The eval command takes the string time values in the starthuman field and returns the UNIX time that corresponds to the string time values.

| gentimes start=8/13/18 increment=6h | fields starthuman endhuman | eval startunix=strptime(starthuman,"%a %B %d %H:%M:%S.%N %Y")

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

starthuman	endhuman	startunix
Mon Aug 13 00:00:00 2018	Mon Aug 13 05:59:59 2018	1534143600.000000
Mon Aug 13 06:00:00 2018	Mon Aug 13 11:59:59 2018	1534165200.000000
Mon Aug 13 12:00:00 2018	Mon Aug 13 17:59:59 2018	1534186800.000000
Mon Aug 13 18:00:00 2018	Mon Aug 13 23:59:59 2018	1534208400.000000
Tue Aug 14 00:00:00 2018	Tue Aug 14 05:59:59 2018	1534230000.000000
Tue Aug 14 06:00:00 2018	Tue Aug 14 11:59:59 2018	1534251600.000000
Tue Aug 14 12:00:00 2018	Tue Aug 14 17:59:59 2018	1534273200.000000
Tue Aug 14 18:00:00 2018	Tue Aug 14 23:59:59 2018	1534294800.000000

time()

Description

This function returns the wall-clock time, in the UNIX time format, with microsecond resolution.

Usage

The value of the time() function will be different for each event, based on when that event was processed by the eval command.

You can use this function with the eval, fieldformat, and where commands, and as part of eval expressions.

Basic example

This example shows the results of using the time() function. The following search does several things:

• The gentimes command generates a set of times with 6 hour intervals. This command returns four fields: startime, starthuman, endtime, and endhuman.
• The fields command returns only the startime and starthuman fields.
• The first eval command takes the numbers in the startime field and returns them with microseconds included.
• The second eval command creates the testtime field and returns the UNIX time at the instant the result was processed by the eval command.

| gentimes start=8/13/18 increment=6h | fields starttime starthuman | eval epoch_time=strptime(starttime,"%s") | eval testtime=time()

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

starttime	starthuman	epoch_time	testtime
1534143600	Mon Aug 13 00:00:00 2018	1534143600.000000	1534376565.299298
1534165200	Mon Aug 13 06:00:00 2018	1534165200.000000	1534376565.299300
1534186800	Mon Aug 13 12:00:00 2018	1534186800.000000	1534376565.299302
1534208400	Mon Aug 13 18:00:00 2018	1534208400.000000	1534376565.299304
1534230000	Tue Aug 14 00:00:00 2018	1534230000.000000	1534376565.299305
1534251600	Tue Aug 14 06:00:00 2018	1534251600.000000	1534376565.299306
1534273200	Tue Aug 14 12:00:00 2018	1534273200.000000	1534376565.299308
1534294800	Tue Aug 14 18:00:00 2018	1534294800.000000	1534376565.299309

Notice the difference in the microseconds between the values in the epoch_time and test_time fields. You can see that the test_time values increase with each result.