The Splunk Software Development Kit (SDK) for PHP makes it easy for PHP applications to communicate with and control a Splunk server. Using the APIs exposed by the SDK, applications can start searches, display results, and perform administrative tasks.

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 Software Development Kit for PHP is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. Details can be found in the file LICENSE.

The SDK requires PHP 5.2.11 or later with the SimpleXML extension. PHP 5.3.7 or later is highly recommended.

OpenSSL support for PHP is required to access Splunk over https:// URLs.

If you're using PHP 5.3.6 or earlier, the cURL extension is required as well. Under this configuration, the SDK will not support streaming large results when accessing Splunk over https:// URLs.

If you haven't already installed Splunk, download it here: http://www.splunk.com/download.

For more about installing and running Splunk plus system requirements, see Installing & Running Splunk.

Get a copy of the Splunk SDK for PHP from GitHub by cloning the repository with git:

git clone https://github.com/splunk/splunk-sdk-php.git

To run the examples, you will need to install a web server locally that supports PHP.

• On Mac OS X, MAMP is recommended.
• On Windows, XAMPP is recommended. You will additionally need to configure PHP to support OpenSSL:
  • Open C:\xampp\php\php.ini.
  • Find the line ;extension=php_openssl.dll and remove the leading semicolon (;).
  • Use the XAMPP Control Panel to restart Apache, if it was already running.
• On Linux, install Apache and PHP from your package manager.

Then, move the entire splunk-sdk-php directory (containing examples and Splunk.php) inside your web server's document root.

• For MAMP, the document root is located at: /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/
• For XAMPP, the document root is located at: C:\xampp\htdocs\

Finally, duplicate settings.default.php in the examples directory, rename the duplicate to settings.local.php, and then edit the file. Uncomment the 'port', 'username', and 'password' fields and update the file with your Splunk server's credentials.

You should then be able to access the SDK examples via a URL similar to:

http://localhost:8888/splunk-sdk-php/examples/index.php

(You may need to alter the port of the URL to another value such as 8080 or 80, depending on your web server.)

If you see an error similar to:

Login Failed.
Reason: fopen(https://localhost:8089/services/auth/login): failed to open stream: Invalid argument

this means that you need to enable support for OpenSSL in your PHP configuration (php.ini).

Requirements:

• PHPUnit 3.6 or later
• Xdebug 2.0.5 or later (for code coverage)
• Duplicate settings.default.php in the tests directory, rename the duplicate to settings.local.php, and then edit the file. Uncomment the 'port', 'username', and 'password' fields and update the file with the credentials of a Splunk server reserved for testing.

To execute all unit tests, run:

phpunit tests

To execute only fast unit tests, run:

phpunit --exclude-group slow tests

To generate a code coverage report, run:

phpunit --coverage-html coverage tests
open coverage/Splunk.html

Requirements:

• phpDocumentor 2
• GraphViz (optional)
  • the dot command-line tool is used to render the class hierarchy diagram in the documentation

To generate the API documentation, run:

phpdoc -d Splunk -t apidocs

You can look at the changelog for each version here.

The PHP SDK provides an object-oriented interface for interacting with a Splunk server.

To use the SDK, first import Splunk.php. This will give you access to all Splunk_* classes.

require_once 'Splunk.php';

Then use an instance of Splunk_Service to connect to a Splunk server.

$service = new Splunk_Service(array(
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'port' => '8089',
    'username' => 'admin',
    'password' => 'changeme',
));
$service->login();

Once connected, you can manipulate various entities on the server, such as saved searches and search jobs.

For example, the following code runs a quick search and prints out the results.

// NOTE: The expression must begin with 'search ' or '| '
$searchExpression = 'search index=_internal | head 100 | top sourcetype';

// Create oneshot search and get results
$resultsXmlString = $service->getJobs()->createOneshot($searchExpression);
$results = new Splunk_ResultsReader($resultsXmlString);

// Process results
foreach ($results as $result)
{
    if ($result instanceof Splunk_ResultsFieldOrder)
    {
        // Process the field order
        print "FIELDS: " . implode(',', $result->getFieldNames()) . "\r\n";
    }
    else if ($result instanceof Splunk_ResultsMessage)
    {
        // Process a message
        print "[{$result->getType()}] {$result->getText()}\r\n";
    }
    else if (is_array($result))
    {
        // Process a row
        print "{\r\n";
        foreach ($result as $key => $valueOrValues)
        {
            if (is_array($valueOrValues))
            {
                $values = $valueOrValues;
                $valuesString = implode(',', $values);
                print "  {$key} => [{$valuesString}]\r\n";
            }
            else
            {
                $value = $valueOrValues;
                print "  {$key} => {$value}\r\n";
            }
        }
        print "}\r\n";
    }
    else
    {
        // Ignore unknown result type
    }
}

An entity is an object on a Splunk server. This includes saved searches, search jobs, indexes, inputs, and many others.

Each type of entity lives inside a collection. Each collection type can be accessed on the Splunk_Service object.

So, for example, to retrieve a list of saved searches or search jobs:

$savedSearches = $service->getSavedSearches()->items();  // in the default namespace
$jobs = $service->getJobs()->items();                    // in the default namespace

You can also retrieve a particular entity in a collection by name:

$topSourcetypesSearch = $service->getSavedSearches()->get('Top five sourcetypes');

An entity has a namespace, which corresponds to the entity's access permissions.

All functions that retrieve an individual entity or a list of entities can be provided a namespace argument. (If you omit this argument, the Splunk_Service's default namespace will be used.)

So, for example, to retrieve the list of saved searches owned by user admin in the search app:

$savedSearches = $service->getSavedSearches()->items(array(
	'namespace' => Splunk_Namespace::createUser('admin', 'search'),
));

Or, to retrieve an individual entity in a namespace:

$topSourcetypesSearch = $service->getSavedSearches()->get(
	'Top five sourcetypes',
	Splunk_Namespace::createApp('search'));

If you typically access many objects in the same namespace, it is possible to pass a default namespace to the Splunk_Service constructor. This allows you to avoid passing an explicit namespace on every call to get() or items().

$service = new Splunk_Service(array(
    ...
    'namespace' => Splunk_Namespace::createUser('admin', 'search'),
));
$service->login();

$jobs = $service->getJobs()->items();			// in the admin/search namespace
$indexes = $service->getIndexes()->items(array(	// in the system namespace
	'namespace' => Splunk_Namespace::createSystem(),
));

The types of namespaces are described here:

For searches that run quickly with a small number of results, it is easiest to create a oneshot search:

// NOTE: The expression must begin with 'search ' or '| '
$searchExpression = 'search index=_internal | head 100 | top sourcetype';

// Create oneshot search and get results
$resultsXmlString = $service->getJobs()->createOneshot($searchExpression);
$results = new Splunk_ResultsReader($resultsXmlString);

// Process results
foreach ($results as $result)
{
    if ($result instanceof Splunk_ResultsFieldOrder)
    {
        // Process the field order
        // ...
    }
    else if ($result instanceof Splunk_ResultsMessage)
    {
        // Process a message
        print "[{$result->getType()}] {$result->getText()}\r\n";
    }
	else if (is_array($result))
    {
        // Process a row
        foreach ($result as $key => $valueOrValues)
        {
            // ...
        }
    }
    else
    {
        // Ignore unknown result type
    }
}

A oneshot search blocks until it completes and returns all results immediately.

For searches that return a large number of results whose progress you don't need to monitor, it is easiest to create a blocking search job:

// NOTE: The expression must begin with 'search ' or '| '
$searchExpression = 'search index=_internal | head 1000';

// Create blocking search job and get results
$job = $service->getJobs()->create($searchExpression, array(
	'exec_mode' => 'blocking',
));
$results = $job->getResults();

// Process results
...

Blocking search jobs wait until all results are available.

For most searches that could potentially return a large number of results, you should create an asynchronous (normal) search job.

Asynchronous jobs allow you to monitor their progress while they are running.

// NOTE: The expression must begin with 'search ' or '| '
$searchExpression = 'search index=_internal | head 10000';

// Create normal search job
$job = $service->getJobs()->create($searchExpression);

// Wait for job to complete and get results
while (!$job->isDone())
{
	printf("Progress: %03.1f%%\r\n", $job->getProgress() * 100);
	usleep(0.5 * 1000000);
	$job->refresh();
}
$results = $job->getResults();

// Process results
...

You can create a normal search job based on a saved search by calling the dispatch() method on the Splunk_SavedSearch object.

$savedSearch = $service->getSavedSearches()->get('Top five sourcetypes');

// Create normal search job based on the saved search
$job = $savedSearch->dispatch();

// Wait for job to complete and get results
...

// Process results
...

A realtime search must be run as an asynchronous search job. The blocking and oneshot modes do not work, because a realtime search never actually completes.

To get results from a realtime search, the getResultsPreviewPage() method must be used instead of the getResults() method.

You can find anything having to do with developing on Splunk at the Splunk developer portal:

• 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 PHP.

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

Stay connected with other developers building on Splunk.

If you would like to contribute to the SDK, please follow one of the links provided below.

• Individual contributions
• Company contributions

1. You will be granted support if you or your company are already covered under an existing maintenance/support agreement. Visit http://www.splunk.com/support and click Submit a Case under Contact a Support Engineer.

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 and php 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.

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