Splunk Search

Using relative time with where command

orion44
Communicator

I'm able to find all the previous day's events by hard coding in date ranges as such:

where mytime > "2018-03-01" AND mytime < "2018-03-02"

How do I use the where command to search for the relative time of yesterday?

Here's the snippet from my search:

| eval mytime=strftime(_time,"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z") 
| stats count(SRC) as "Source IP" by SRC mytime 
| dedup SRC sortby mytime 
| rename SRC as "Source IP" 
| where mytime > "2018-03-01" AND mytime < "2018-03-02"
Tags (1)
0 Karma
1 Solution

elliotproebstel
Champion

Instead of converting times to human-readable formats before comparing them, the most straightforward way to write your search to always look for values from "yesterday" (regardless of what today is) would be to use the relative_time function, as you alluded to. Integrating this directly into your current search structure would look like this:

| stats count(SRC) as "Source IP" by SRC _time 
| dedup SRC sortby _time 
| rename SRC as "Source IP" 
| where _time>=relative_time(now(), "-1d@d") AND _time<=relative_time(now(), "@d")

This will allow Splunk to do all comparisons using epoch time strings and still display the time value in human-readable format, something Splunk will do by default with only the _time field.

View solution in original post

elliotproebstel
Champion

Instead of converting times to human-readable formats before comparing them, the most straightforward way to write your search to always look for values from "yesterday" (regardless of what today is) would be to use the relative_time function, as you alluded to. Integrating this directly into your current search structure would look like this:

| stats count(SRC) as "Source IP" by SRC _time 
| dedup SRC sortby _time 
| rename SRC as "Source IP" 
| where _time>=relative_time(now(), "-1d@d") AND _time<=relative_time(now(), "@d")

This will allow Splunk to do all comparisons using epoch time strings and still display the time value in human-readable format, something Splunk will do by default with only the _time field.

kamlesh_vaghela
SplunkTrust
SplunkTrust

Hi @orion44,

Have you try to compare it with epochtime?
Can you please try this? I have keep same logic just change in time format.

| eval mytime=_time
 | stats count(SRC) as "Source IP" by SRC mytime 
 | dedup SRC sortby mytime 
 | rename SRC as "Source IP" | eval T1=strptime("2018-03-01","%Y-%m-%d"),T2=strptime("2018-03-02","%Y-%m-%d")
 | where mytime > T1 AND mytime < T2

Thanks

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 ...

Why Splunk Customers Should Attend Cisco Live 2026 Las Vegas

Why Splunk Customers Should Attend Cisco Live 2026 Las Vegas     Cisco Live 2026 is almost here, and this ...

Data Management Digest – May 2026

Welcome to the May 2026 edition of Data Management Digest!   As your trusted partner in data innovation, the ...