This is a sample snippet test for loading events from CouchDB (using _changes) into Splunk.

splunk_loader.py

import os
import sys
import json
import time
import pytz
import couchdb
import dateutil.parser
from email import utils
from datetime import datetime
import splunklib.client as client

DATABASE = "quantify-this"
#ACCOUNT_URL = 'http://splunk:password@db.example.com:5984'  # or for something like Cloudant - careful, this hits the API a lot.
ACCOUNT_URL = 'http://localhost:5984'  # This is your local CouchDB database

TIMESTAMP_KEY = 'start'
NAME_KEY = 'category'

HOST = "splunk.example.com"
PORT = 443
USERNAME = "admin"
PASSWORD = "password"

script_dirpath = os.path.dirname(os.path.join(os.getcwd(), __file__))

last_eventid_filepath = script_dirpath + "/last_eventid"


# Open file containing the last event ID and get the last record read
if os.path.isfile(last_eventid_filepath):
    try:
        last_eventid_file = open(last_eventid_filepath,'r')
        last_eventid = last_eventid_file.readline()
        last_eventid_file.close()
    # Catch the exception. Real exception handler would be more robust
    except IOError:
        sys.stderr.write('Error: failed to read last_eventid file, ' + last_eventid_filepath + '\n')
        sys.exit(2)
else:
    sys.stderr.write('Error: ' + last_eventid_filepath + ' file not found! Starting from zero. \n')
    last_eventid = 0

s = couchdb.Server(ACCOUNT_URL)
db = s[DATABASE]

# the since parameter defaults to 'last_seq' when using continuous feed
if last_eventid:
    ch = db.changes(continuous=True, include_docs=True, since=last_eventid, limit=5000)
else:
    ch = db.changes(include_docs=True, limit=5000)

this_last_eventid = ch["last_seq"]
print this_last_eventid

service = client.connect(
        host=HOST,
        port=PORT,
        username=USERNAME,
        password=PASSWORD)

    # Retrieve the index for the data
myindex = service.indexes["some-index"]

time.sleep(1)
for changeset in ch["results"]:
    # Create a Service instance and log in
    event_msg = None
    try:
        doc = db[changeset["id"]]
    except couchdb.http.ResourceNotFound:
        continue
    else:
        try:
            d = doc[TIMESTAMP_KEY]
            d2 = dateutil.parser.parse(d)
            d2tuple = d2.timetuple()
            d2timestamp = time.mktime(d2tuple)
            timestamp = utils.formatdate(d2timestamp)
            name = doc[NAME_KEY]
            if timestamp and name:
                event_msg = "%s name='%s'" % (timestamp, name)

            del doc[TIMESTAMP_KEY]
            del doc[NAME_KEY]

            for key, value in doc.iteritems():
                if isinstance(value, (long, int)):
                    event_msg += " %s=%f" % (key, value)
                else:
                    event_msg += " %s='%s'" % (key, value)
            if len(event_msg) > 150:
                print event_msg
                # Submit an event over HTTP
                myindex.submit(event_msg, sourcetype="some-event", host="local")
        except:
            print "error"
            pass

if this_last_eventid > 0:
   try:
     last_eventid_file = open(last_eventid_filepath,'w')
     last_eventid_file.write(str(this_last_eventid))
     last_eventid_file.close()
   # Catch the exception. Real exception handler would be more robust
   except IOError:
     sys.stderr.write('Error writing last_eventid to file: ' + last_eventid_filepath + '\n')
     sys.exit(2)