Event Substitutions

Some event output modules allow you to substitute special patterns with details of the event.

This is particularly common in SQL-based outputs, such as those to MySQL/MariaDB, or to messaging outputs such as Email.

The following table shows the substitutions available…

PatternSubstituted With
%SThe start date and time
%EThe end date and time
%DThe total duration (usually in seconds)
%MThe log message
%TAGSA comma-delimited list of tags

The options passed to the Write function can also be accessed. If you called Write with an option of 'unit', any occurrence of %UNIT would be replaced with the unit ID.

Example

For example, if you were record a Door Closed event on the 10th of December 2035, your SQL statement that looked like this…

INSERT INTO events (start,end,message) VALUES ('%S','%E','%M')

would be transformed into this…

INSERT INTO events (start,end,message) VALUES ('2035-12-10 09:00:00','2035-12-10 09:00:00','Door Closed')