isNull, isEmpty, isBlank Search Operators

• The isNull operator checks a string and returns a boolean value: true if the string is null, or false if the string is not null.
• The isEmpty operator checks if a string contains no characters and is only whitespace.
• The isBlank operator checks if a string contains no characters, is only whitespace, and is null.

When is a field null?

Fields can hold a null value for the following reasons:

• A parsing operation failed to parse a value.
• There is a mismatch from a lookup operator query.
• There is a missing field from a geo lookup operator query.
• There is a missing field from a transpose operator query.

When to use isNull, isEmpty, isBlank

isNull(<string>)

Checks if the <string> value is "null".

• isNull(null) = true
• isNull("") = false
• isNull(" ") = false
• isNull("bob") = false
• isNull(" bob ") = false

Returns true if the string is null.

isEmpty(<string>)

Checks if the <string> value is an empty string containing no characters or whitespace.

• isEmpty(null) = true
• isEmpty("") = true
• isEmpty(" ") = false
• isEmpty("bob") = false
• isEmpty(" bob ") = false

Returns true if the string is null or empty.

isBlank(<string>)

Checks if the value is null, empty, or contains only whitespace characters.

• isBlank(null) = true
• isBlank("") = true
• isBlank(" ") = true
• isBlank("bob") = false
• isBlank(" bob ") = false

Returns true if the string is null, empty, or only whitespace.

Examples

Run a geo lookup query where we can find remote IP addresses that are not in the geo database

In this situation, no country_code will be associated with the IP address and the field value will be null.

Running a query like:

| parse "remote_ip=*]" as remote_ip
| lookup country_code from geo://location on ip = remote_ip
| if (isNull(country_code), "unknown", country_code) as country_code

uses the isNull operator to check the field value of country_code and if it returns true has the if operator replace the value with the string unknown:

Use where to check for null values

To check for null values from a lookup operation, use a query with where, like:

| parse "example_ip=*]" as ip
| lookup country_name, city from geo://location on ip = ip
| where isNull(country_name)