topic Re: How can I deserialize a JSON string to be shown as Event? in Dashboards & Visualizations

How can I deserialize a JSON string to be shown as Event?

arminbashizade — Tue, 25 May 2021 17:05:28 GMT

I've created a dashboard for searching and filtering events, and it consists of two panels for presenting the results:

a table to show a summary of the events based on search criteria, columns are: Time, CorrelationId, Service Name, Log Level, and Message, which are shared attributes among all events
an Events panel to show the entirety of an event, which includes attributes that are specific to an event and are not shared with other events, e.g. Stack Trace for errors

the table's drilldown is set to "row", and when a row is clicked it sets some tokens that are used to search again to find that event and show it on the Events panel.

My goal is to avoid the second search, because the event is already retrieved by the table panel.

I've tried passing _raw from table panel to events panel and use makeresults but that command creates a table row and can only be viewed under Statistics/Table tab and does not show anything when Events/List tab is selected. What I need is to view the event in the format that is shown in the screenshot below:

I know that renaming a JSON to _raw will deserialize it, but that requires a result-set of events to begin with, e.g.

* | head 1 | eval tmp="{\"key\":\"value\"}" | rename tmp as _raw

will show the new JSON instead of the original event

but the below query with makeresults does not give the same result:

| makeresults | eval tmp="{\"key\":\"value\"}" | rename tmp as _raw

only Statistics tab shows results.

To summarize, I want to get the event in the format that can be seen in the first screenshot above, but without running a search, because I already have the entire event, including its _raw.

Any help is appreciated!

Re: How can I deserialize a JSON string to be shown as Event?

kamlesh_vaghela — Fri, 28 May 2021 09:33:06 GMT

@arminbashizade

Bcoz here we have an event to replace _raw with new values.

* | head 1 | eval tmp="{\"key\":\"value\"}" | rename tmp as _raw

will show the new JSON instead of the original event

but the below query with makeresults does not give the same result:

| makeresults | eval tmp="{\"key\":\"value\"}" | rename tmp as _raw

Well with this search, you can not see events in event tab bcoz makeresults it will generate results which you can see in statistics tab not event.

But with the makeresults you can have fields. Try this,

| makeresults | eval _raw="{\"key\":\"value\"}"| extract

If you need exact representations of an event then use below search.

* | head 1 | eval _raw="{\"key\":\"value\"}"

Thanks
KV
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Re: How can I deserialize a JSON string to be shown as Event?

ITWhisperer — Fri, 28 May 2021 09:47:01 GMT

Have you tried saving the the job id in a token and passing that in the drilldown and using loadjob to retrieve the results?

Re: How can I deserialize a JSON string to be shown as Event?

arminbashizade — Fri, 28 May 2021 17:56:09 GMT

Thanks @ITWhisperer ! That helped with finding the answer. I can't pass the job id from the table result, because the result is still a table and does not include events. However, I can have both panels share the same job.

I created another panel and hid it. This hidden panel runs the same search as the table panel, but without the last " | table ..." command, so that I can have a result set of events. Then I changed both table and panel event to load that job and search through that.

The table panel uses a query like this:

| loadjob $job_id$ | table Time, Level, Message,...

And events panel uses a query like this:

| loadjob $job_id$ | search EventId=$selected_event_id$

Note that if the hidden panel search does not extract the fields you're going to use when you load the job, you need to add "spath" after "loadjob", e.g.

| loadjob $job_id$ | spath | table Time,...

see this question for how to store job id in a token: https://community.splunk.com/t5/Dashboards-Visualizations/How-to-get-search-ID-job-sid-from-XML-dashboard-in-JavaScript/m-p/374089

for hiding a panel:

Re: How can I deserialize a JSON string to be shown as Event?

kamlesh_vaghela — Fri, 28 May 2021 18:57:23 GMT

@arminbashizade

loadjob will work on single search head but on cluster it might now work.

A search head cluster can run the loadjob command only on scheduled saved searches. A search head cluster runs searches on results or artifacts that the search head cluster replicates.

So for safe side just verify your dashboard on cluster as well.

https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/SplunkCloud/latest/SearchReference/Loadjob#Search_head_clusters

Thanks
KV
▄︻̷̿┻̿═━一

If any of my reply helps you to solve the problem Or gain knowledge, an upvote would be appreciated.