topic Re: Still having to "SPATH" despite "INDEXED_EXTRACTIONS = json" being true? in Splunk Enterprise

Still having to "SPATH" despite "INDEXED_EXTRACTIONS = json" being true?

swangertyler — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 15:54:36 GMT

These two pieces of SPL return two different-looking tables.

index=servicenow sourcetype=incident number=INC5181781 | spath opened_at | spath resolved_at | table number, opened_at, resolved_at, number, _time

Will provide me with different results vs.

index=servicenow sourcetype=incident number=INC5181781 | table number, opened_at, resolved_at, number, _time

In the one with "spath" the table has more values for those values for "opened_at" and "resolved_at". The same number of events are discovered, but the table makes it look like one event is "missing" dimensions.

Even if I do these two search, and compare the "Selected Fields" section on the left hand side, the one with spath has more "events" that have the values.

In the props.conf file the "source" has the line

INDEXED_EXTRACTIONS = json

This may also be impacting my ability to search as well. It seems like I will not get complete results unless I do something like

sourcetype=incident |spath number |spath category |search number=INC5181781 category=Closed

I assume something is not configured as I expect it to be, and I am unsure where else to check.

Re: Still having to "SPATH" despite "INDEXED_EXTRACTIONS = json" being true

richgalloway — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 22:06:51 GMT

Can you share an example (sanitized) raw event? It sounds like the event is not perfect JSON and so INDEXED_EXTRACTIONS is not extracting fields.

Re: Still having to "SPATH" despite "INDEXED_EXTRACTIONS = json" being true

swangertyler — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 18:35:32 GMT

When I put the _raw event into something like https://jsonlint.com/ it appears to be valid. However, I do know that a field in the original payload is a large text field, so it seems possible that something funny is happening.

I'll see if I can sanitize an event and get it posted here.

Re: Still having to "SPATH" despite "INDEXED_EXTRACTIONS = json" being true?

PickleRick — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 20:02:01 GMT

There are three separate methods of handling json data - spath, auto_kv and indexed extractions. And each of them names fields differently as far as I remember. auto_kv "flattens" the json structure and gives you only leaf field names whereas spath creates field names from the whole object path. I think indexed extractions produce something more similar to auto_kv but I'm not 100% sure - I don't use it very often.