outputcsv

Description

If you have Splunk Enterprise, this command saves search results to the specified CSV file on the local search head in the $SPLUNK_HOME/var/run/splunk/csv directory. Updates to $SPLUNK_HOME/var/run/*.csv using the outputcsv command are not replicated across the cluster.

If you have Splunk Cloud Platform, you cannot use this command. Instead, you have these options:

CAUTION: This command is considered risky because, if used incorrectly, it can pose a security risk or potentially lose data when it runs. As a result, this command triggers SPL safeguards. See SPL safeguards for risky commands in Securing the Splunk Platform.

Syntax

outputcsv [append=<bool>] [create_empty=<bool>] [override_if_empty=<bool>] [dispatch=<bool>] [usexml=<bool>] [singlefile=<bool>] [<filename>]

Optional arguments

append

Syntax: append=<bool>

Description: If append is true, the command attempts to append to an existing CSV file, if the file exists. If the CSV file does not exist, a file is created. If there is an existing file that has a CSV header already, the command only emits the fields that are referenced by that header. The command cannot append to .gz files.

Default: false

create_empty

Syntax: create_empty=<bool>

Description: If set to true and there are no results, a zero-length file is created. When set to false and there are no results, no file is created. If the file previously existed, the file is deleted.

Default: false

dispatch

Syntax: dispatch=<bool>

Description: If set to true, refers to a file in the job directory in $SPLUNK_HOME/var/run/splunk/dispatch/<job id>/.

filename

Syntax: <filename>

Description: Specify the name of a CSV file to write the search results to. This file should be located in $SPLUNK_HOME/var/run/splunk/csv. Directory separators are not permitted in the filename. If no filename is specified, the command rewrites the contents of each result as a CSV row into the _xml field. Otherwise the command writes into a file. The .csv file extension is appended to the filename if the filename has no file extension.

override_if_empty

Syntax: override_if_empty=<bool>

Description: If override_if_empty=true and no results are passed to the output file, the existing output file is deleted, If override_if_empty=false and no results are passed to the output file, the command does not delete the existing output file.

Default: true

singlefile

Syntax: singlefile=<bool>

Description: If singlefile is set to true and the output spans multiple files, collapses it into a single file.

Default: true

usexml

Syntax: usexml=<bool>

Description: If there is no filename, specifies whether or not to encode the CSV output into XML. This option should not be used when invoking the outputcsv from the UI.

Usage

There is no limit to the number of results that can be saved to the CSV file.

Internal fields and the outputcsv command

When the outputcsv command is used there are internal fields that are automatically added to the CSV file. The internal fields that are added to the output in the CSV file are:

  • _raw
  • _time
  • _indextime
  • _serial
  • _sourcetype
  • _subsecond

To exclude internal fields from the output, use the fields command and specify the fields that you want to exclude. For example: 

... | fields - _indextime _sourcetype _subsecond _serial | outputcsv MyTestCsvFile

Multivalued fields

The outputcsv command merges values in a multivalued field into single space-delimited value.

Distributed deployments

The outputcsv command is not compatible with search head pooling and search head clustering.

The command saves the *.csv file on the local search head in the $SPLUNK_HOME/var/run/splunk/ directory. The *.csv files are not replicated on the other search heads.

Examples

1. Output search results to a CSV file

Output the search results to the mysearch.csv file. The CSV file extension is automatically added to the file name if you don't specify the extension in the search. 

... | outputcsv mysearch

2. Add a dynamic timestamp to the file name

You can add a timestamp to the file name by using a subsearch. 

... | outputcsv [stats count | eval search=strftime(now(), "mysearch-%y%m%d-%H%M%S.csv")]

3. Exclude internal fields from the output CSV file

You can exclude unwanted internal fields from the output CSV file. In this example, the fields to exclude are _indextime, _sourcetype, _subsecond, and _serial. 

index=_internal sourcetype="splunkd" | head 5 | fields _raw _time | fields - _indextime _sourcetype _subsecond _serial | outputcsv MyTestCsvfile

4. Do not delete the CSV file if no search results are returned

Output the search results to the mysearch.csv file if results are returned from the search. Do not delete the mysearch.csv file if no results are returned. 

... | outputcsv mysearch.csv override_if_empty=false