Uploading log files

While Devo is designed to receive real-time data feeds, it's sometimes useful to upload static files if you want historical log data to be accessible in Devo for querying and analysis. These static files will always be stored in tables starting with the my.upload tag levels.

The process is simple and this 3-minute video takes you through it step by step.

Upload a data file

You have the option of uploading a file from your local machine or from a Dropbox account. Note that there is a 2GB limit on files uploaded from the local machine so if you have an extremely large file, you should first upload it to Dropbox.

1. Go to Data upload in the navigation panel.

2. Select either Dropbox or Local files. 

   • If you select Dropbox, you will be prompted to grant Devo access to your Dropbox files, then log into Dropbox. Navigate to the folder and select the file you want to upload. 

   • If you select Local files, you can either drag and drop the file or navigate to the necessary folder and select it for upload. You can try the process using this file.

3. When you have selected the file, click the Upload File button. The settings page appears.

   

   This page contains a couple of fields that will determine how the data will be saved in Devo.

   Tag

   The first two levels of the tag are predefined as my.upload. The third and fourth levels are up to you. Try to name them in a way that will help you identify the data contained in the data table.

   Date parsing type

   The date assigned to the events when parsing the data contained in your file. You have two options: can either use the date at the moment of uploading the file or use a date contained in the event information. If you choose Current date, each event will be assigned the date at the moment of uploading the file. If you choose Date from a log field, each event will be assigned a date that is included in their information. You must then indicate the Parsing log type so that Devo can scan the events and highlight the fields that it recognizes as possible date/time information. You can select one of the following options as a parsing type: CSV: the file is treated as a typical CSV in which the sequence of fields is constructed using commas as delimiters. The resultant fields appear below for you to select the desired one to extract the date.  Delimiter: if the delimiter in your file is not a comma, you can specify a different one. You just need to type the delimiter that matches the one contained in your file and then select one of the fields below to extract to date. Syslog: if your file complies with the syslog structure, you can select this option and the fields with a valid date format will appear below for you to select. Regular expression: you can use a regular expression to establish a search pattern to find a piece of information that expresses a date. If you want to know more about regular expressions, the language they use and the syntax to construct them you can click the following link. The fields that appear in grey cannot be selected because they do not match the accepted format while the fields in green are the ones that coincide with a format recognized by Devo. Check the table at the end of the article to see the accepted date formats as well as some of the most recurrent regular expressions to search for dates.

4. Click the Confirm Settings button. 

To work with the new data, go to Data search and use the finder to locate the my.upload table that you just created.

The above table will always be created with the following three columns:

Recognized date formats

Devo is capable of recognizing a wide range of date formats in the files you upload and you can use regular expressions to find them and use them.