fields.conf

The following are the spec and example files for fields.conf.

fields.conf.spec

#   Version 9.2.7
#

OVERVIEW

# This file contains possible attribute and value pairs for:
#  * Telling Splunk how to handle multi-value fields.
#  * Distinguishing indexed and extracted fields.
#  * Improving search performance by telling the search processor how to
#    handle field values.
#
# Each stanza controls different search commands settings.
#
# There is a fields.conf file in the $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/default/ directory.
# Never change or copy the configuration files in the default directory.
# The files in the default directory must remain intact and in their original
# location.
#
# To set custom configurations, create a new file with the name fields.conf in
# the $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/ directory. Then add the specific settings
# that you want to customize to the local configuration file.
# For examples, see fields.conf.example.
# You must restart the Splunk instance to enable configuration changes.
#
# To learn more about configuration files (including file precedence) see the
# documentation located at
# http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Admin/Aboutconfigurationfiles
#

GLOBAL SETTINGS

#
# Use the [default] stanza to define any global settings.
#   * You can also define global settings outside of any stanza, at the top of
#     the file.
#   * Each conf file should have at most one default stanza. If there are
#     multiple default stanzas, attributes are combined. In the case of
#     multiple definitions of the same attribute, the last definition in the
#     file wins.
#   * If an attribute is defined at both the global level and in a specific
#     stanza, the value in the specific stanza takes precedence.

[<field name>|sourcetype::<sourcetype>::<wildcard expression>]

* The name of the field that you are configuring. This can be a simple field name,
  or it can be a wildcard expression that is scoped to a source type.
* Field names can contain only "a-z", "A-Z", "0-9", "." , ":", and "_". They
  cannot begin with a number or "_".
  Field names cannot begin with a number "0-9" or an underscore "_".
* Wildcard expressions have the same limitations as field names, but they can
  also contain and/or start with a *.
* Do not create indexed fields with names that collide with names of fields
  that are extracted at search time.
* A source-type-scoped wildcard expression causes all indexed fields that match
  the wildcard expression to be scoped with the specified source type.
  * Apply source-type-scoped wildcard expressions to all fields associated with
    structured data source types, such as JSON-formatted data. Do not apply it
    to mixed datatypes that contain both structured and unstructured data.
  * When you apply this method to structured data fields, searches against
    those fields should complete faster.
  * Example: '[sourcetype::splunk_resource_usage::data*]' defines all fields
    starting with "data" as indexed fields for
    'sourcetype=splunk_resource_usage'.
  * The Splunk software processes source-type-scoped wildcard expressions
    before it processes source type aliases.
  * Source-type-scoped wildcard expressions require
  'indexed_fields_expansion = t' in limits.conf.
* Follow the stanza name with any number of the following attribute/value
  pairs.

# 'TOKENIZER' enables you to indicate that a field value is a smaller part of a
# token. For example, your raw event has a field with the value "abc123", but
# you need this field to to be a multivalue field with both "abc" and “123" as
# values.
TOKENIZER = <regular expression>
* A regular expression that indicates how the field can take on multiple values
  at the same time.
* Use this setting to configure multivalue fields. Refer to the online
  documentation for multivalue fields.
* If empty, the field can only take on a single value.
* Otherwise, the first group is taken from each match to form the set of
  values.
* This setting is used by the "search" and "where" commands, the summary and
  XML outputs of the asynchronous search API, and by the "top", "timeline", and
  "stats" commands.
* Tokenization of indexed fields is not supported. If "INDEXED = true",
  the tokenizer attribute will be ignored.
* No default.

INDEXED = <boolean>
* Indicates whether a field is created at index time or search time.
* Set to "true" if the field is created at index time.
* Set to "false" for fields extracted at search time. This accounts for the
  majority of fields.
* Default: false

INDEXED_VALUE = [true|false|<sed-cmd>|<simple-substitution-string>]
* Set to "true" if the value is in the raw text of the event.
* Set to "false" if the value is not in the raw text of the event.
* Setting this to "true" expands any search for "key=value"
  into a search for value AND key=value
  since value is indexed.
* For advanced customization, this setting supports sed style substitution.
  For example, 'INDEXED_VALUE=s/foo/bar/g'
  takes the value of the field, replaces all instances of 'foo' with 'bar,'
  and uses that new value as the value to search in the index.
* This setting also supports a simple substitution based on looking for the
  literal string '<VALUE>' (including the '<' and '>' characters).
  For example, 'INDEXED_VALUE=source::*<VALUE>*'
  takes a search for 'myfield=myvalue'
  and searches for 'source::*myvalue*'
  in the index as a single term.
* For both substitution constructs, if the resulting string starts with a '[',
  Splunk interprets the string as a Splunk LISPY expression.  For example,
  'INDEXED_VALUE=[OR <VALUE> source::*<VALUE>]'
  turns 'myfield=myvalue'
  into applying the LISPY expression '[OR myvalue source::*myvalue]'
  (meaning it matches either 'myvalue' or 'source::*myvalue' terms).
* NOTE: You only need to set 'indexed_value' if "indexed = false".
* Default: true

fields.conf.example

#   Version 9.2.7
#
# This file contains an example fields.conf.  Use this file to configure
# dynamic field extractions.
#
# To use one or more of these configurations, copy the configuration block into
# fields.conf in $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/system/local/. You must restart Splunk to
# enable configurations.
#
# To learn more about configuration files (including precedence) please see the
# documentation located at
# http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Admin/Aboutconfigurationfiles
#
# These tokenizers result in the values of To, From and Cc treated as a list,
# where each list element is an email address found in the raw string of data.

[To]
TOKENIZER = (\w[\w\.\-]*@[\w\.\-]*\w)

[From]
TOKENIZER = (\w[\w\.\-]*@[\w\.\-]*\w)

[Cc]
TOKENIZER = (\w[\w\.\-]*@[\w\.\-]*\w)