walklex
Description
Generates a list of terms or indexed fields from each bucket of event indexes.
Watch this Splunk How-To video, Using the Walklex Command, to see a demonstration about how to use this command.
Due to the variable nature of merged_lexicon.lex
and .tsidx
files, the walklex
command does not always return consistent results.
The walklex
command doesn't work on hot buckets. This command only works on warm or cold buckets, after the buckets have a merged lexicon file or single time-series index (tsidx) file. If neither of these files exist, a message is returned, as expected. This message doesn't indicate that there is a problem with the health of your environment.
Certain restricted search commands, including mpreview
, mstats
, tstats
, typeahead
, and walklex
, might stop working if your organization uses field filters to protect sensitive data. See Plan for field filters in your organization in Securing the Splunk Platform.
Syntax
The required syntax is in bold.
- | walklex
- [ type=<walklex-type> ]
- [ prefix=<string> | pattern=<wc-string> ]
- <index-list>
- [ splunk_server=<wc-string> ]
- [ splunk_server_group=<wc-string> ]...
Required arguments
- <index-list>
- Syntax: index=<index-name> index=<index-name> ...
- Description: Limits the search to one or more indexes. For example,
index=_internal
.
Optional arguments
- prefix | pattern
- Syntax: prefix=<string> | pattern=<wc-string>
- Description: Limits results to terms that match a specific pattern or prefix. Either prefix or pattern can be specified but not both. Includes only buckets with a merged_lexicon file or a single tsidx file. This means that hot buckets are generally not included.
- Default: pattern=*
- splunk_server
- Syntax: splunk_server=<wc-string>
- Description: Specifies the distributed search peers from which to return results.
- If you are using Splunk Cloud Platform, omit this parameter.
- If you are using Splunk Enterprise, you can specify only one
splunk_server
argument. However, you can use a wildcard when you specify the server name to indicate multiple servers. For example, you can specifysplunk_server=peer01
orsplunk_server=peer*
. Uselocal
to refer to the search head.
- Default: All configured search peers return information
- splunk_server_group
- Syntax: splunk_server_group=<wc-string>
- Description: Limits the results to one or more server groups. You can specify a wildcard character in the string to indicate multiple server groups with similar names.
- If you are using Splunk Cloud Platform, omit this parameter.
- Default: None
- type
- Syntax: type = ( all | field | fieldvalue | term )
- Description: Specifies which type of terms to return in the lexicon. See Usage for more information about using the
type
argument options.- Use
field
to return only the unique field names in each index bucket. - Use
fieldvalue
to include only indexed field terms. - Use
term
to exclude all indexed field terms of the form<field>::<value>
.
- Use
- Default: all
Usage
The walklex
command is a generating command, which use a leading pipe character. The walklex
command must be the first command in a search. See Command types.
When the Splunk software indexes event data, it segments each event into raw tokens using rules specified in segmenters.conf
file. You might end up with raw tokens that are actually key-value pairs separated by an arbitrary delimiter such as an equal ( = ) symbol.
The following search uses the walklex
and where
commands to find the raw tokens in your index. It uses the stats
command to count the raw tokens.
| walklex index=<target-index> | where NOT like(term, "%::%") | stats sum(count) by term
Return only indexed field names
Specify the type=field
argument to have walklex
return only the field names from indexed fields.
The indexed fields returned by walklex
can include default fields such as host
, source
, sourcetype
, the date_*
fields, punct
, and so on. It can also include additional indexed fields configured as such in props.conf
and transforms.conf
and created with the INDEXED_EXTRACTIONS
setting or other WRITE_META
methods. The discovery of this last set of additional indexed fields is likely to help you with accelerating your searches.
Return the set of terms that are indexed fields with indexed values
Specify type=fieldvalue
argument to have walklex
return the set of terms from the index that are indexed fields with indexed values.
The type=fieldvalue
argument returns the list terms from the index that are indexed fields with indexed values. Unlike the type=field
argument, where the values returned are only the field names themselves, the type=fieldvalue
argument returns indexed field names that have any field value.
For example, if the indexed field term is runtime::0.04
, the value returned by the type=fieldvalue
argument is runtime::0.04
. The value returned by the type=field
argument is runtime
.
Return all TSIDX keywords that are not part of an indexed field structure
Specify type=term
to have walklex
return the keywords from the TSIDX files that are not part of any indexed field structure. In other words, it excludes all indexed field terms of the form <field>::<value>
.
Return terms of all three types
When you do not specify a type, or when you specify type=all
, walklex
uses the default type=all
argument. This causes walklex
to return the terms in the index of all three types: field
, fieldvalue
, and term
.
When you use type=all
, the indexed fields are not called out as explicitly as the fields are with the type=field
argument. You need to split the term field on ::
to obtain the field values from the indexed term.
Support for hot buckets
Because the walklex
command doesn't work on hot buckets, recently loaded data displays in search results only after buckets have rolled over from hot to warm. You can either wait for buckets of an index to roll over from hot to warm on their own, or you can restart Splunk platform or manually roll the buckets over to warm. See Rolling buckets manually from hot to warm.
Restrictions
The walklex
command applies only to event indexes. It cannot be used with metrics indexes.
People who have search filters applied to one or more of their roles cannot use walklex
unless they also have a role with either the run_walklex capability or the admin_all_objects capability. For more information about role-based search filters, see Create and manage roles with Splunk Web in Securing the Splunk Platform. For more information about role-based capabilities, see Define roles on the Splunk platform with capabilities, in Securing the Splunk Platform.
Basic examples
1. Return the total count for each term in a specific bucket
The following example returns all of the terms in each bucket of the _internal
index and finds the total count for each term.
| walklex index=_internal | stats sum(count) BY term
2. Specifying multiple indexes
The following example returns all of the terms that start with foo
in each bucket of the _internal
and _audit
indexes.
| walklex prefix=foo index=_internal index=_audit
3. Use a pattern to locate indexed field terms
The following example returns all of the indexed field terms for each bucket that end with bar
in the _internal
index.
| walklex pattern=*bar type=fieldvalue index=_internal
4. Return all field names of indexed fields
The following example returns all of the field names of indexed fields in each bucket of the _audit
index.
| walklex type=field index=_audit
See also
untable | where |
This documentation applies to the following versions of Splunk Cloud Platform™: 9.1.2312, 9.2.2403 (latest FedRAMP release), 9.2.2406
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