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HTTP/S (Bulk API)

Cribl Edge supports receiving data over HTTP/S from Cribl Bulk API, Splunk HEC, and Elastic Bulk API endpoints.

Type: Push | TLS Support: YES | Event Breaker Support: No

This Source supports gzip-compressed inbound data when the Content‑Encoding: gzip connection header is set.

Configuring Cribl Edge to Receive Data over HTTP(S)
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From the top nav, click Manage, then select a Fleet to configure. Next, you have two options:

To configure via the graphical QuickConnect UI, click Routing > QuickConnect (Stream) or Collect (Edge). Next, click Add Source at left. From the resulting drawer’s tiles, select [Push >] HTTP. Next, click either Add Destination or (if displayed) Select Existing. The resulting drawer will provide the options below.

Or, to configure via the Routing UI, click Data > Sources (Stream) or More > Sources (Edge). From the resulting page’s tiles or left nav, select [Push >] HTTP. Next, click New Source to open a New Source modal that provides the options below.

Cribl Edge ships with an HTTP Source preconfigured to listen on Port 10080, and on several default endpoints. You can clone or directly modify this Source to further configure it, and then enable it.

General Settings
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Input ID: Enter a unique name to identify this HTTP(S) Source definition.

Address: Enter the hostname/IP on which to listen for HTTP(S) data. (E.g., localhost or 0.0.0.0.)

Port: Enter the port number.

Authentication Settings
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Auth tokens: Shared secrets to be provided by any client (Authorization: <token>). Click Generate to create a new secret. If empty, unauthenticated access will be permitted.

Optional Settings
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Cribl HTTP event API: Base path on which to listen for Cribl HTTP API requests. To construct the actual endpoint, Cribl Edge will append /_bulk to this path. For example, with the default value of /cribl, your senders should send events to a /cribl/_bulk path. Use an empty string to disable.

Elastic API endpoint (for Bulk API): Base path on which to listen for Elasticsearch API requests. Currently, the only supported option is the default /elastic, to which Cribl Edge will append /_bulk. So, your senders should send events to an /elastic/_bulk path. Other entries are faked as success. Use an empty string to disable.

Cribl generally recommends that you use the dedicated Elasticsearch API Source instead of this endpoint. The Elastic API implementation here is provided for backward compatibility, and for users who want to ingest multiple inputs on one HTTP/S port.

Splunk HEC endpoint: Absolute path on which to listen for Splunk HTTP Event Collector (HEC) API requests. Use an empty string to disable. Default entry is /services/collector.

This Splunk HEC implementation is an event (i.e., not raw) endpoint. For details, see Splunk’s documentation. To send data to it from a HEC client, use either /services/collector or /services/collector/event. (See the examples below.)

Cribl generally recommends that you use the dedicated Splunk HEC Source instead of this endpoint. The Splunk HEC implementation here is provided for backward compatibility, and for users who want to ingest multiple inputs on one HTTP/S port.

Splunk HEC Acks: Whether to enable Splunk HEC acknowledgements. Defaults to No.

Tags: Optionally, add tags that you can use to filter and group Sources in Cribl Edge’s Manage Sources page. These tags aren’t added to processed events. Use a tab or hard return between (arbitrary) tag names.

TLS Settings (Server Side)
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Enabled defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

Certificate name: Name of the predefined certificate.

Private key path: Server path containing the private key (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Passphrase: Passphrase to use to decrypt private key.

Certificate path: Server path containing certificates (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

CA certificate path: Server path containing CA certificates (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Authenticate client (mutual auth): Require clients to present their certificates. Used to perform mutual authentication using SSL certs. Defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

  • Validate client certs: Reject certificates that are not authorized by a CA in the CA certificate path, or by another trusted CA (e.g., the system’s CA). Defaults to Yes.

  • Common name: Regex matching subject common names in peer certificates allowed to connect. Defaults to .*. Matches on the substring after CN=. As needed, escape regex tokens to match literal characters. E.g., to match the subject CN=worker.cribl.local, you would enter: worker\.cribl\.local.

Minimum TLS version: Optionally, select the minimum TLS version to accept from connections.

Maximum TLS version: Optionally, select the maximum TLS version to accept from connections.

Persistent Queue Settings
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In this section, you can optionally specify persistent queue storage, using the following controls. This will buffer and preserve incoming events when a downstream Destination is down, or exhibiting backpressure.

On Cribl-managed Cribl.Cloud Workers (with an Enterprise plan), this tab exposes only the Enable Persistent Queue toggle. If enabled, PQ is automatically configured in Always On mode, with a maximum queue size of 1 GB disk space allocated per PQ‑enabled Source, per Worker Process.

The 1 GB limit is on uncompressed inbound data, and no compression is applied to the queue. This limit is not configurable. For configurable queue size, compression, mode, and other options below, use a hybrid Group.

Enable Persistent Queue: Defaults to No. When toggled to Yes:

Mode: Select a condition for engaging persistent queues.

  • Always On: This default option will always write events to the persistent queue, before forwarding them to Cribl Edge’s data processing engine.
  • Smart: This option will engage PQ only when the Source detects backpressure from Cribl Edge’s data processing engine.

Max buffer size: The maximum number of events to hold in memory before reporting backpressure to the sender and writing the queue to disk. Defaults to 1000. (This buffer is per connection, not just per Worker Process – and this can dramatically expand memory usage.)

Commit frequency: The number of events to send downstream before committing that Stream has read them. Defaults to 42.

Max file size: The maximum data volume to store in each queue file before closing it and (optionally) applying the configured Compression. Enter a numeral with units of KB, MB, etc. If not specified, Cribl Edge applies the default 1 MB.

Max queue size: The maximum amount of disk space that the queue is allowed to consume on each Worker Process. Once this limit is reached, this Source will stop queueing data and block incoming data. Required, and defaults to 5 GB. Accepts positive numbers with units of KB, MB, GB, etc. Can be set as high as 1 TB, unless you’ve configured a different Max PQ size per Worker Process in Fleet Settings.

Queue file path: The location for the persistent queue files. Defaults to $CRIBL_HOME/state/queues. To this field’s specified path, Cribl Edge will append /<worker-id>/inputs/<input-id>.

Compression: Optional codec to compress the persisted data after a file is closed. Defaults to None; Gzip is also available.

In Cribl Edge 4.1 and later, Source-side PQ’s default Mode is Always on, to best ensure events’ delivery. For details on optimizing this selection, see Always On versus Smart Mode.

You can optimize Workers’ startup connections and CPU load at Fleet Settings > Worker Processes.

Processing Settings
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Fields
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In this section, you can add Fields to each event using Eval-like functionality.

Name: Field name.

Value: JavaScript expression to compute field’s value, enclosed in quotes or backticks. (Can evaluate to a constant.)

Pre-Processing
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In this section’s Pipeline drop-down list, you can select a single existing Pipeline to process data from this input before the data is sent through the Routes.

Advanced Settings
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Enable proxy protocol: Toggle to Yes if the connection is proxied by a device that supports Proxy Protocol v1 or v2. This setting affects how the Source handles the __srcIpPort field.

Capture request headers: Toggle this to Yes to add request headers to events, in the __headers field.

Max active requests: Maximum number of active requests allowed for this Source, per Worker Process. Defaults to 256. Enter 0 for unlimited.

Activity log sample rate: Determines how often request activity is logged at the info level. The default 100 value logs every 100th value; a 1 value would log every request; a 10 value would log every 10th request; etc.

Socket timeout (seconds): How long Cribl Edge should wait before assuming that an inactive socket has timed out. The default 0 value means wait forever.

Request timeout (seconds): How long to wait for an incoming request to complete before aborting it. The default 0 value means wait indefinitely.

Keep-alive timeout (seconds): After the last response is sent, Cribl Edge will wait this long for additional data before closing the socket connection. Defaults to 5 seconds; minimum is 1 second; maximum is 600 seconds (10 minutes).

The longer the Keep‑alive timeout, the more Cribl Edge will reuse connections. The shorter the timeout, the closer Cribl Edge gets to creating a new connection for every request. When request frequency is high, you can use longer timeouts to reduce the number of connections created, which mitigates the associated cost.

Environment: If you’re using GitOps, optionally use this field to specify a single Git branch on which to enable this configuration. If empty, the config will be enabled everywhere.

Connected Destinations
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Select Send to Routes to enable conditional routing, filtering, and cloning of this Source’s data via the Routing table.

Select QuickConnect to send this Source’s data to one or more Destinations via independent, direct connections.

Internal Fields
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Cribl Edge uses a set of internal fields to assist in handling of data. These “meta” fields are not part of an event, but they are accessible, and Functions can use them to make processing decisions.

Fields for this Source:

  • __headers – Added only when Advanced Settings > Capture request headers is set to Yes.
  • __inputId
  • __hecToken
  • __srcIpPort – See details below.
  • __host (Elastic In)
  • __id (Elastic In)
  • __index (Elastic In)
  • __type (Elastic In)

Overriding __srcIpPort with Client IP/Port
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The __srcIpPort field’s value contains the IP address and (optionally) port of the client sending data to this Source.

When any proxies (including load balancers) lie between the HTTP client and the Source, the last proxy adds an X‑Forwarded‑For header whose value is the IP/port of the original HTTP client. With multiple proxies, this header’s value will be an array, whose first item is the original client IP/port.

If X‑Forwarded‑For is present, and Advanced Settings > Enable proxy protocol is set to No, the original client IP/port in this header will override the value of __srcIpPort.

If Enable proxy protocol is set to Yes, the X‑Forwarded‑For header’s contents will not override the __srcIpPort value. (Here, the upstream proxy can convey the client IP/port without using this header.)

Format and Endpoint
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Cribl Edge expects HTTP(S) events to be formatted as one JSON record per event. Here are two event records:

Sample Event Format
{"_time":1541280341, "_raw":"this is a sample event ", "host":"myHost", "source":"mySource", "fieldA":"valueA", "fieldB":"valueB"}
{"_time":1541280341, "host":"myOtherHost", "source":"myOtherSource", "_raw": "{\"message\":\"Something informative happened\", \"severity\":\"INFO\"}"}

Note 1: Events can be sent as separate POSTs, but Cribl highly recommends combining multiple events in newline-delimited groups, and POSTing them together.

Note 2: If an HTTP(S) source is routed to a Splunk destination, fields within the JSON payload are mapped to Splunk fields. Fields that do not have corresponding (native) Splunk fields become index-time fields. For example, let’s assume we have a HTTP(S) event like this:

{"_time":1541280341, "host":"myHost", "source":"mySource", "_raw":"this is a sample event ", "fieldA":"valueA"}

Here, _time, host and source become their corresponding fields in Splunk. The value of _raw becomes the actual body of the event, and fieldA becomes an index-time field. (fieldA::valueA).

Examples
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Cribl Edge
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The examples in this section demonstrate sending HTTP data into a Cribl Edge binary that you manage on-prem, or on a VM. To set up these examples:

  1. Configure Cribl to listen on port 10080 for HTTP (default). Set authToken to myToken42.
  2. Send a payload to your Cribl Edge receiver.

Cribl Endpoint – Single Event
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Cribl Single Event Example:
curl -k http://<myCriblHost>:10080/cribl/_bulk -H 'Authorization: myToken42' -d '{"_raw":"this is a sample event ", "host":"myHost", "source":"mySource", "fieldA":"valueA", "fieldB":"valueB"}'

Cribl Endpoint – Multiple Events
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Cribl Endpoint - Multiple Events
curl -k http://<myCriblHost>:10080/cribl/_bulk -H 'Authorization: myToken42' -d $'{"_raw":"this is a sample event ", "host":"myHost", "source":"mySource", "fieldA":"valueA", "fieldB":"valueB"} \n {"_raw":"this is another sample event ", "host":"myOtherHost", "source":"myOtherSource", "fieldA":"valueA", "fieldB":"valueB"}'

Splunk HEC Event Endpoint
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Splunk HEC Event Endpoint
curl -k http://<myCriblHost>:10080/services/collector/event -H 'Authorization: myToken42' -d '{"event":"this is a sample event ", "host":"myHost", "source":"mySource", "fieldA":"valueA", "fieldB":"valueB"}'

curl -k http://<myCriblHost>:10080/services/collector -H 'Authorization: myToken42' -d '{"event":"this is a sample event ", "host":"myHost", "source":"mySource", "fieldA":"valueA", "fieldB":"valueB"}'

For Splunk HEC, the token specification can be either Splunk <token> or <token>.

Cribl.Cloud – Single Event
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  1. Generate and copy a token in your Cribl.Cloud instance’s HTTP Source > General Settings.

  2. From the command line, use https, your Cribl.Cloud portal’s Ingest Address and port, and the token’s value. You can find the Ingest Address on the top nav’s Network Settings page, under the Data Sources tab.

Cribl.Cloud – Single Event
curl -k https://default.main.<Your-Org-ID>.cribl.cloud:10080/cribl/_bulk -H 'Authorization: <token_value>' -d '{"_raw":"this is a sample event ", "host":"myHost", "source":"mySource", "fieldA":"valueA", "fieldB":"valueB"}'

With a Cribl.Cloud Enterprise plan, generalize the above URL’s default.main substring to <group-name>.main when sending to other Fleets.