Searching specific time ranges

When you create a search, try to specify only the dates or times that you're interested in. Specifying a narrow time range is a great way to filter the data in your dataset and to avoid producing more results than you really need.

To specify a time range in your search syntax, you use the earliest and latest time modifiers. You can specify an exact time such as earliest="10/5/2019:20:00:00", or a relative time such as earliest=-h or latest=@w6.

Modifier Syntax Description
earliest earliest=[+|-]

<time_integer><time_unit>@<time_unit>

Specify the earliest _time for the time range of your search.

Use earliest=1 to specify the UNIX epoch time 1, which is UTC January 1, 1970 at 12:00:01 AM.

latest latest=[+|-]

<time_integer><time_unit>@<time_unit>

Specify the latest time for the _time range of your search.

If you omit latest, the current time (now) is used.

Here are some examples:

  • To search for data from now and go back in time 5 minutes, use earliest=-5m.
  • To search for data from now and go back 40 seconds, use earliest=-40s.
  • To search for data between 2 and 4 hours ago, use earliest=-4h latest=-2h.
  • To search for data using an exact date range, such as from October 15 at 8 PM to October 22 at 8 PM, use the timeformat %m/%d/%Y:%H:%M:%S and specify dates like earliest="10/15/2019:20:00:00" latest="10/22/2019:20:00:00"
  • To search for data from the beginning of today (12 AM or midnight) use earliest=@d. The @ symbol is referred to as the snap to and d is the time unit.
  • To search for data from the beginning of today (12 AM or midnight) and apply a time offset of -2h, use earliest=@d-2h. This results in an earliest time of 10 PM yesterday.

Note: When snapping to a time, Splunk software always '''snaps backwards''' or rounds down to the latest time that is not after the specified time. For example, if it is 11:59:00 and you "snap to" using hours, you will snap to 11:00 not 12:00.

Here's an example of using a time range in a search that goes back 5 minutes, snapping to the beginning of the minute. The end of the time range is the beginning of the current minute. 

| from main where earliest=-5m@m and latest=@m

For more information about time modifiers, see Time modifiers.