The Splunk Enterprise Software Development Kit for Python

Version 1.6.15

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

The Splunk platform 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 platform 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 platform to build exciting new applications.

Getting started with the Splunk SDK for Python

Get started with the Splunk Enterprise SDK for Python

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

Requirements

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

• Python 2.7+ or Python 3.7.

  The Splunk Enterprise SDK for Python has been tested with Python v2.7 and v3.7.

• Splunk Enterprise

  If you haven't already installed Splunk Enterprise, download it here. For more information, see the Splunk Enterprise Installation Manual.

• Splunk Enterprise SDK for Python

  Get the Splunk Enterprise SDK for Python from PyPI. If you want to contribute to the SDK, clone the repository from GitHub.

Install the SDK

Use the following commands to install the Splunk Enterprise SDK for Python libraries in different ways. However, it's not necessary to install the libraries to run the examples and unit tests from the SDK.

Use easy_install:

[sudo] easy_install splunk-sdk

Use pip:

[sudo] pip install splunk-sdk

Install the Python egg:

[sudo] pip install --egg splunk-sdk

Install the sources you cloned from GitHub:

[sudo] python setup.py install

Testing Quickstart

You'll need docker and docker-compose to get up and running using this method.

make up SPLUNK_VERSION=8.0
make wait_up
make splunkrc_default
make test
make down

To run the examples and unit tests, you must put the root of the SDK on your PYTHONPATH. For example, if you downloaded the SDK to your home folder and are running OS X or Linux, add the following line to your .bash_profile file:

export PYTHONPATH=~/splunk-sdk-python

The SDK command-line examples require a common set of arguments that specify the host, port, and login credentials for Splunk Enterprise. For a full list of command-line arguments, include --help as an argument to any of the examples.

Create a .splunkrc convenience file

To connect to Splunk Enterprise, many of the SDK examples and unit tests take command-line arguments that specify values for the host, port, and login credentials for Splunk Enterprise. 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.

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, enter them at the command line rather than saving them in this file.

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

# Splunk Enterprise host (default: localhost)
host=localhost
# Splunk Enterprise admin port (default: 8089)
port=8089
# Splunk Enterprise username
username=admin
# Splunk Enterprise password
password=changeme
# Access scheme (default: https)
scheme=https
# Your version of Splunk Enterprise
version=8.0

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

• For example on 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" appears to be a nameless file with an extension. You can use the command line to create this file by going to the C:\Users\<currentusername> directory and entering the following command:

  Notepad.exe .splunkrc
  

  Click Yes, then continue creating the file.

Run the examples

Examples are located in the /splunk-sdk-python/examples directory. To run the examples at the command line, use the Python interpreter and include any arguments that are required by the example:

python examplename.py --username="admin" --password="changeme"

If you saved your login credentials in the .splunkrc file, you can omit those arguments:

python examplename.py

To get help for an example, use the --help argument with an example:

python examplename.py --help

Run the unit tests

The Splunk Enterprise SDK for Python contains a collection of unit tests. To run them, open a command prompt in the /splunk-sdk-python directory and enter:

make

You can also run individual test files, which are located in /splunk-sdk-python/tests. To run a specific test, enter:

make specific_test_name

The test suite uses Python's standard library, the built-in unittest library, pytest, and tox.

Notes:

• The test run fails unless the SDK App Collection app is installed.
• To exclude app-specific tests, use the make test_no_app command.
• To learn about our testing framework, see Splunk Test Suite on GitHub. In addition, the test run requires you to build the searchcommands app. The make command runs the tasks to do this, but more complex testing may require you to rebuild using the make build_app command.

Repository

Changelog

The CHANGELOG contains a description of changes for each version of the SDK. For the latest version, see the CHANGELOG.md on GitHub.

Branches

The master branch represents a stable and released version of the SDK. To learn about our branching model, see Branching Model on GitHub.

Documentation and resources

Community

Stay connected with other developers building on the Splunk platform.

• Email
• Issues and pull requests
• Community Slack
• Splunk Answers
• Splunk Blogs
• Twitter

Contributions

If you would like to contribute to the SDK, see Contributing to Splunk. For additional guidelines, see CONTRIBUTING.

Support

• You will be granted support if you or your company are already covered under an existing maintenance/support agreement. Submit a new case in the Support Portal and include "Splunk Enterprise SDK for Python" in the subject line.

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

• Splunk will NOT provide support for SDKs if the core library (the code in the /splunklib directory) has been modified. If you modify an SDK and want support, you can find help through the broader community and Splunk Answers.

  We would also like to know why you modified the core library, so please send feedback to [email protected].

• File any issues on GitHub.

Contact Us

You can reach the Splunk Developer Platform team at [email protected].

License

The Splunk Enterprise Software Development Kit for Python is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE for details.