topic validate default date parsing support for ISO8601 in Getting Data In

validate default date parsing support for ISO8601

gliptak — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 21:18:42 GMT

Is there a way to validate default date parsing against ISO8601 ( 2012-11-02'T'14:34:02,781-07:00 ) date/time? I tried

| makeresults | eval _raw="2012-11-02'T'14:34:02,781-07:00 foo=bar"

and the timestamp is not being parsed.

I also tried with no success setting

sourcetype=log4j

Any pointers for the syntax to work this?

There are a number of threads without complete approaches around this

https://community.splunk.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?advanced=false&allow_punctuation=false&filter=location&location=forum-board:getting-data-in&q=ISO8601

Re: validate default date parsing support for ISO8601

richgalloway — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 01:16:22 GMT

First, the letter T is not quoted in ISO8601 datetime strings. The spec may put quotation marks around it, but that's to emphasize it as a literal character.

Second, timestamps are interpreted when the data is indexed. Since the makeresults command is not indexing any data, no timestamp is parsed. You need the strptime() function to do that in SPL.

Try putting the sample event into a text file and using the Settings->Add Data wizard to read that file. Then you'll see the date parsed correctly.