Getting Data In

Grouping by items in an array

Maurice
Explorer

Hi,

I'm hoping someone can help me out here.

I have a property(books) on each event which holds an array of objects.

I would like to group by books{}.name with count on y axis and create a bar chart.

I tried using top books{}.name but this does not seem to give the correct results, seems to miss out on some groups all together

 

{

books:[

        {name: "book1"},

{name: "book2"},

{name: "book3"},

{name: "book3"},

{name: "book1"},

{name: "book1"},

      ]

}

Would you have an idea of how to fix this,

Kind Regards,

Maurice

Labels (1)
0 Karma
1 Solution

ITWhisperer
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Are you extracting the fields with spath first?

| makeresults 
| eval _raw="{
\"books\":[
{\"name\": \"book1\"},
{\"name\": \"book2\"},
{\"name\": \"book3\"},
{\"name\": \"book3\"},
{\"name\": \"book1\"},
{\"name\": \"book1\"},
      ]
}"
| spath
| top books{}.name

View solution in original post

ITWhisperer
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Are you extracting the fields with spath first?

| makeresults 
| eval _raw="{
\"books\":[
{\"name\": \"book1\"},
{\"name\": \"book2\"},
{\"name\": \"book3\"},
{\"name\": \"book3\"},
{\"name\": \"book1\"},
{\"name\": \"book1\"},
      ]
}"
| spath
| top books{}.name

Maurice
Explorer

Thanks a million for the reply.

It really helped focus me in the correct direction.

I ended up having to put an explicit spath before each of my search command that referenced one of the complex object properties.

similar to:

 

 

| spath books{}.name
| search books{}.name
| top books{}.name

 

 
 
Tags (1)
0 Karma
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!

[Puzzles] Solve, Learn, Repeat: Matching cron expressions

This puzzle (first published here) is based on matching timestamps to cron expressions.All the timestamps ...

Design, Compete, Win: Submit Your Best Splunk Dashboards for a .conf26 Pass

Hello Splunkers,  We’re excited to kick off a Splunk Dashboard contest! We know that dashboards are a primary ...

May 2026 Splunk Expert Sessions: Security & Observability

Level Up Your Operations: May 2026 Splunk Expert Sessions Whether you are refining your security posture or ...