parseDate

The parseDate operator extracts a date or time from a string and provides a timestamp in milliseconds. To convert an epoch timestamp in a human-readable format, use the formatDate operator.

Syntax

• parseDate(<strDate>, <dateFormat>)
• parseDate(<strDate>, <dateFormat>, <timeZone>)

Rules

• strDate must start with the characters to match with the dateFormat pattern. For example, "3/4/2005 other" but not "other 3/4/2005".
• dateFormat is a pattern string, such as "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss a". A full list of the supported patterns can be found on Java's simpledateformat documentation.
• If you don't supply timeZone, the operator defaults to the time zone set in your preferences. For a list of timeZone codes, see List of tz database time zones.

Examples

1. Given the date 2019-11-18T19:00:00.000-08:00 you'd specify the dateFormat as yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX. For example,

   | parseDate(date, "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX") as milliseconds

2. Given a log message such as:

   instance of Win32_NTLogEvent
   {
       EventIdentifier = 100;
       Logfile = "Application";
       RecordNumber = 894528;
       SourceName = "Bonjour Service";
       TimeGenerated = "20170720000030.000000-000";
       TimeWritten = "20170720000030.000000-000";
       Type = "Error";
       ...

The following query returns TimeGenerated as a timestamp in milliseconds, in this example 1500534030000.

| parse "TimeGenerated = \"*.000000-000" as dd
| parseDate(dd, "yyyyMMddHHmmss") as milliseconds

To specify a time zone:

| parseDate(dd, "yyyyMMddHHmmss", "etc/utc") as milliseconds