Dashboards & Visualizations

How to extract unique values from XML data?

jcman01
Engager

I have a splunk log entry that contains XML. I need to extract all the unique values for Customer City, and show them, such as what I would do in Unix with sort|uniq.

Is this possible in splunk?

<request>
  <CustomerName>Smith</CustomerName>
  <CustomerAddress>111 Elm Street</CustomerAddress>
  <CustomerCity>Allentown</CustomerCity>
</request>
Tags (2)
0 Karma
1 Solution

martin_mueller
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Try this:

| stats count | eval xml = "<request><CustomerName>Smith</CustomerName><CustomerAddress>111 Elm Street</CustomerAddress><CustomerCity>Allentown</CustomerCity></request>,<request><CustomerName>Smith</CustomerName><CustomerAddress>111 Elm Street</CustomerAddress><CustomerCity>Allentown</CustomerCity></request>,<request><CustomerName>Smith</CustomerName><CustomerAddress>111 Elm Street</CustomerAddress><CustomerCity>Not Allentown</CustomerCity></request>" | makemv xml delim="," | mvexpand xml | rename xml as _raw
| spath | dedup request.CustomerCity | table request.CustomerCity

The first block just sets up dummy data, the meat is the last three commands. spath grabs the fields from your XML, dedup does the sort|uniq part, table picks out just that column to show.

View solution in original post

martin_mueller
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Try this:

| stats count | eval xml = "<request><CustomerName>Smith</CustomerName><CustomerAddress>111 Elm Street</CustomerAddress><CustomerCity>Allentown</CustomerCity></request>,<request><CustomerName>Smith</CustomerName><CustomerAddress>111 Elm Street</CustomerAddress><CustomerCity>Allentown</CustomerCity></request>,<request><CustomerName>Smith</CustomerName><CustomerAddress>111 Elm Street</CustomerAddress><CustomerCity>Not Allentown</CustomerCity></request>" | makemv xml delim="," | mvexpand xml | rename xml as _raw
| spath | dedup request.CustomerCity | table request.CustomerCity

The first block just sets up dummy data, the meat is the last three commands. spath grabs the fields from your XML, dedup does the sort|uniq part, table picks out just that column to show.

Got questions? Get answers!

Join the Splunk Community Slack to learn, troubleshoot, and make connections with fellow Splunk practitioners in real time!

Meet up IRL or virtually!

Join Splunk User Groups to connect and learn in-person by region or remotely by topic or industry.

Get Updates on the Splunk Community!

SOK it to Me: Top 3 Benefits of Using Splunk Operator on Kubernetes that’ll Make ...

    Thursday, July 9, 2026  |  11:00AM–12:00PM PDT Duration: 1 hour (includes Q&A) Managing can feel like a ...

Upgrade Prep for 10.4, Network Observability Deep Dives, and More from Splunk Lantern

Splunk Lantern is Splunk’s customer success center that provides practical guidance from Splunk experts on key ...

Splunk Developer Day announcements: AI agents, MCP tools, Forecasting, and Custom ...

Splunk Developer Day was packed with product and platform updates for developers building in the AI ...