Here is how to do it in a search:
| makeresults
| eval Date="4/2/2018"
| eval timestamp=strptime(Date, "%m/%d/%Y")
| eval formattedTimestamp = strftime(timestamp,"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%Q")
Is the "Date" field what you want to use as the timestamp of the event? If so, timestamp recognition options -> http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/Data/Configuretimestamprecognition
Thanks...
I must not be explaining my self correctly.
I import a csv file. Splunk automagically puts a _time field into the dataset. This _time field is not what I want to use. I want to use the Date field that was already in the csv during import. Problem is that whole column is a string and not recognized as date. Therefore I cannot specify date ranges in a search with it.
So far I've had some very limited luck with this string:
index="dor_test" source="filename.csv" | eval Date=strptime(Date,"%m/%d/%Y") | fieldformat Date = strftime(Date, "%d-%b-%Y") | eval _time=Date
try this :
| makeresults
| eval Date="4/2/2018"
| eval timestamp=strftime(strptime(Date, "%m/%d/%Y"),"%m/%d/%Y") | eval _time=timestamp
I had the same issue when trying to parse a date string from an input lookup. The following worked for me based on your example.
index="dor_test" source="filename.csv"
| convert mktime(Date) as Date timeformat="%m/%d/%Y"
| eval Date=strftime(Date,"%m/%d/%Y")
Please note that the timeformat needs to match the incoming format. e.g.
4/2/2018 = "%m/%d/%Y"
4/2/18 = "%m/%d/%y"
Hope that helps.