The Splunk Software Development Kit for Java

Version 1.9.5

The Splunk Software Development Kit (SDK) for Java contains library code and examples designed to enable developers to build applications using Splunk.

Splunk is a search engine and analytic environment that uses a distributed map-reduce architecture to efficiently index, search and process large time-varying data sets.

The Splunk product is popular with system administrators for aggregation and monitoring of IT machine data, security, compliance and a wide variety of other scenarios that share a requirement to efficiently index, search, analyze and generate real-time notifications from large volumes of time series data.

The Splunk developer platform enables developers to take advantage of the same technology used by the Splunk product to build exciting new applications that are enabled by Splunk's unique capabilities.

Getting started with the Splunk SDK for Java

The Splunk SDK for Java contains library code and examples that show how to programmatically interact with Splunk for a variety of scenarios including searching, saved searches, data inputs, and many more, along with building complete applications.

The information in this Readme provides steps to get going quickly, but for more in-depth information be sure to visit the Splunk Developer Portal.

Requirements

Here's what you need to get going with the Splunk SDK for Java.

Splunk

If you haven't already installed Splunk, download it here. For more about installing and running Splunk and system requirements, see Installing & Running Splunk. The Splunk SDK for Java has been tested with Splunk Enterprise 9.0 and 8.2.

Splunk SDK for Java

Get the Splunk SDK for Java—download the SDK as a ZIP, then extract the files and build the SDK. Or, download the JAR and add it to your project.

If you want to contribute to the SDK, clone the repository from GitHub.

Java using Maven

You can use Apache Maven to build your Splunk SDK for Java projects. With a few updates to your project's pom.xml file, it will retrieve all necessary dependencies and seamlessly build your project.

To add the Splunk SDK for Java .JAR file as a dependency:

1. Add the repository to your project's pom.xml file:

<repositories>
  ...
  <repository>
    <id>splunk-artifactory</id>
    <name>Splunk Releases</name>
    <url>http://splunk.jfrog.io/splunk/ext-releases-local</url>
  </repository>
</repositories>

2. Add the dependency to the pom.xml file:

<dependencies>
  ...
  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.splunk</groupId>
    <artifactId>splunk</artifactId>
    <version>1.9.5</version>
  </dependency>
</dependencies>

Be sure to update the version number to match the version of the Splunk SDK for Java that you are using.

Note: You can make similar changes to use Gradle as well.

Building the SDK and documentation

To build the SDK, open a command prompt in the /splunk-sdk-java directory and enter:

mvn

or

mvn package

This command builds all of the .class and .jar files. If you just want to build the .class files, enter:

mvn compile

To remove all build artifacts from the repository, enter:

mvn clean

To build the documentation for the SDK, it is being automatically generated with mvn package, otherwise enter:

cd splunk
mvn javadoc:javadoc

Usage

Login using username and password

import com.splunk.Service;
import com.splunk.ServiceArgs;

/**
 * Login using username and password
 */
public class SplunkLogin {

    static Service service = null;
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        ServiceArgs loginArgs = new ServiceArgs();
        loginArgs.setPort(8089);
        loginArgs.setHost("localhost");
        loginArgs.setScheme("https");
        loginArgs.setUsername("USERNAME"); // Use your username
        loginArgs.setPassword("PASSWORD"); // Use your password

        // Initialize the SDK client
        service = Service.connect(loginArgs);
    }
}

Login using Session Token

import com.splunk.Service;
import com.splunk.ServiceArgs;

/**
 * Login using Session token
 */
public class SplunkLogin {

    static Service service = null;
    /**
     * Session Token.
     * Actual token length would be longer than this token length.
     */
    static String token = "1k_Ostpl6NBe4iVQ5d6I3Ohla_U5";

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        ServiceArgs loginArgs = new ServiceArgs();
        loginArgs.setPort(8089);
        loginArgs.setHost("localhost");
        loginArgs.setScheme("https");
        loginArgs.setToken(String.format("Splunk %s", token));

        // Initialize the SDK client
        service = Service.connect(loginArgs);
    }
}

• Login using username and password will create Session token internally.
• Login using Credentials (username & password) OR directly using Session token are similar.
• In above two approaches, there is one limitation that expiration time of Session token cannot be extended. User has to re-login every time when token expires.
• To overcome this limitation, Authentication token is used instead of Session token.
• In Authentication token, user has a provision to set token expiration time. Splunk allows user to set relative/absolute time for token expiration.
• In other words, Authentication token is configurable whereas Session token cannot be configured.

Login using Authentication Token (RECOMMENDED)

import com.splunk.Service;
import com.splunk.ServiceArgs;

/**
 * Login using Authentication token
 */
public class SplunkLogin {

    static Service service = null;
    /**
     * Authentication Token.
     * Actual token length would be longer than this token length.
     */
    static String token = "1k_Ostpl6NBe4iVQ5d6I3Ohla_U5";

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        ServiceArgs loginArgs = new ServiceArgs();
        loginArgs.setPort(8089);
        loginArgs.setHost("localhost");
        loginArgs.setScheme("https");
        loginArgs.setToken(String.format("Bearer %s", token));

        // Initialize the SDK client
        service = Service.connect(loginArgs);
    }
}

Example of running a simple search by first creating the search job

import com.splunk.Job;
import com.splunk.ResultsReader;
import com.splunk.ResultsReaderXml;
import com.splunk.Service;
import com.splunk.ServiceArgs;

/**
 * Logged in using Authentication token.
 * Assuming that authentication token is already created from Splunk web.
 * Create Job using search creation.
 * Read results and print _raw fields
 */
public class SearchExample {

    static Service service = null;

    /**
     * Authentication Token.
     * Actual token length would be longer than this token length.
     */
    static String token = "1k_Ostpl6NBe4iVQ5d6I3Ohla_U5";

    public static void main(String args[]) {

        ServiceArgs loginArgs = new ServiceArgs();
        loginArgs.setPort(8089);
        loginArgs.setHost("localhost");
        loginArgs.setScheme("https");
        loginArgs.setToken(String.format("Bearer %s", token));

        // Initialize the SDK client
        service = Service.connect(loginArgs);

        // Run a simple search by first creating the search job
        Job job = service.getJobs().create("search index=_internal | head 10");

        // Waiting for search results to be ready
        while (!job.isReady()) {
            try {
                Thread.sleep(500); // 500 ms
            } catch (Exception e) {
                // Handle exception here.
            }
        }

        // Read results
        try {
            ResultsReader reader = new ResultsReaderXml(job.getEvents());

            // Iterate over events and print _raw field
            reader.forEach(event -> System.out.println(event.get("_raw")));

        } catch (Exception e) {
            // Handle exception here.
        }
    }
}

For more information on authentication using tokens, please visit Splunk Docs.

Unit tests

The Splunk SDK for Java includes several unit tests that are run at the command line.

Set up the .splunkrc file

To connect to Splunk, many of the SDK examples and unit tests take command-line arguments that specify values for the host, port, and login credentials for Splunk. For convenience during development, you can store these arguments as key-value pairs in a text file named .splunkrc. Then, the SDK examples and unit tests use the values from the .splunkrc file when you don't specify them.

To use this convenience file, create a text file with the following format:

# Splunk host (default: localhost)
host=localhost
# Splunk admin port (default: 8089)
port=8089
# Splunk username
username=admin
# Splunk password
password=changeme
# Access scheme (default: https)
scheme=https
# Your version of Splunk (default: 5.0)
version=5.0

Save the file as .splunkrc in the current user's home directory.

• For example, on Mac OS X, save the file as:

  ~/.splunkrc

• On Windows, save the file as:

  C:\Users\currentusername\.splunkrc

  You might get errors in Windows when you try to name the file because ".splunkrc" looks like a nameless file with an extension. You can use the command line to create this file—go to the C:\Users\currentusername directory and enter the following command:

  Notepad.exe .splunkrc

  Click Yes, then continue creating the file.

Note: Storing login credentials in the .splunkrc file is only for convenience during development. This file isn't part of the Splunk platform and shouldn't be used for storing user credentials for production. And, if you're at all concerned about the security of your credentials, just enter them at the command line rather than saving them in this file.

Run unit tests

To run the SDK unit tests, open a command prompt in the /splunk-sdk-java directory and enter:

mvn test

You can also run specific test classes by passing the class to the -Dtest= option, e.g.,

mvn test -Dtest=AtomFeedTest

The maven configuration can also produce an HTML report of all the tests automatically when mvn package / mvn test are executed. Alternate way to generate report is using below command under splunk directory:

mvn jacoco:report

The report will be written in /splunk-sdk-java/splunk/target/site/surefire-report.html.

It's also possible to run the units within Java IDEs such as IntelliJ and Eclipse. For example, to open the Splunk SDK for Java project in Eclipse:

1. Click File, Import.
2. Click General, Existing Projects into Workspace, then click Next.
3. In Select root directory, type the path to the Splunk SDK for Java root directory (or click Browse to locate it), then click Finish.

Measure code coverage

Measurement of code coverage is generated along with mvn package / mvn test:

mvn jacoco:report

To view the coverage report, open /splunk-sdk-java/splunk/target/test-report/index.html in your web browser.

Repository

Changelog

The CHANGELOG.md file in the root of the repository contains a description of changes for each version of the SDK. You can also find it online at https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-java/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md.

Branches

The master branch always represents a stable and released version of the SDK. You can read more about our branching model on our Wiki at https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-java/wiki/Branching-Model.

Documentation and resources

If you need to know more:

• For all things developer with Splunk, your main resource is the Splunk Developer Portal.

• For conceptual and how-to documentation, see the Overview of the Splunk SDK for Java.

• For API reference documentation, see the Splunk SDK for Java Reference.

• For more about the Splunk REST API, see the REST API Reference.

• For more about about Splunk in general, see Splunk>Docs.

• For more about this SDK's repository, see our GitHub Wiki.

Community

Stay connected with other developers building on Splunk.

How to contribute

If you would like to contribute to the SDK, go here for more information:

• Splunk and open source

• Individual contributions

• Company contributions

Support

1. You will be granted support if you or your company are already covered under an existing maintenance/support agreement. Send an email to support@splunk.com and include "Splunk SDK for Java" in the subject line.

2. If you are not covered under an existing maintenance/support agreement, you can find help through the broader community at:

   • Splunk Answers (use the sdk, java, python, and javascript tags to identify your questions)
   • Splunkdev Google Group

3. Splunk will NOT provide support for SDKs if the core library (the code in the splunk directory) has been modified. If you modify an SDK and want support, you can find help through the broader community and Splunk answers (see above). We would also like to know why you modified the core library—please send feedback to devinfo@splunk.com.

4. File any issues on GitHub.

Contact Us

You can reach the Developer Platform team at devinfo@splunk.com.

License

The Splunk Java Software Development Kit is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Details can be found in the LICENSE file.