Getting Data In

How to extract the timestamp from an HTML file?

tfitzgerald_col
Engager

Howdy. I'm trying to index an HTML file, and I can not, for the life of me, get the timestamp to extract when using the preview. Here's the event:

<abbr class="dt" title="2013-05-27T04:24:58.979Z">May 27, 2013, 4:24:58 AM
GMT</abbr>:
<cite class="sender vcard"><a class="tel" href="tel:+*******"><span class="fn">+**********</span></a></cite>:
<q>Yeah, I'll be there</q></div> 

And here's what I'm using for settings.

TIME_FORMAT = %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S
TIME_PREFIX = <abbr class="\w+" title="
MAX_TIMESTAMP_LOOKAHEAD = 19

It's just not finding the timestamp at all. Any idea why? I've tried a few other iterations, even going so far as to make the prefix <.*>, and setting the time format to match the second timestamp; still nothing. I'm getting pretty frustrated.

0 Karma

alacercogitatus
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

I would avoid using any kind of tag notation within TIME_PREFIX. Have you tried just as below?

TIME_PREFIX= title="
TIME_FORMAT = %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%N%Z
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!

Make Your Machine Data AI-Ready in Splunk

Every team is getting ready for AI agents.   Thursday, November 12, 2026  |  11AM  PST / 2PM EST   ...

Splunk Asynchronous Forwarding Explained

Splunk asynchronous forwarding is often misunderstood as simply setting autoLBVolume. That is not quite right. ...

How to Monitor AI Agents with Splunk Agent Observability

Let’s say I’m running a travel planning AI app in production. A user asks for three concise hotel options in ...