Adding data by file upload

Adding data by file upload

The fastest way to explore a dataset without an agent: upload a local file and let the platform parse it. This is the file-upload surface under the collection area (Add Data), the third of the three data-ingest paths alongside agent collection and server-side listening collection.

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The flow

Add Data → Select File → Select Sourcetype:

1. Select File — drag or drop a data file (or browse). The platform accepts the file types it can parse as log or metric data; a file over the size limit is refused, and an empty file is refused with an explicit message.
2. Upload — the file is loaded and processed according to its type.
3. Select Sourcetype — pick an existing source type or create one for the data. The source type defines how the stream is split into events, how the timestamp is extracted, and how fields are parsed — the same source-type model as agent collection (see indexes-and-field-extraction.md).

After parsing, the data is searchable from the search page. Because file upload is a one-shot ingest, the fields it produces are whatever the source type’s parsing rules declare — the same “parse at ingest” model the agent applies in its transformers.