Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder that occurs at all ages. Epilepsy not only brings physical pain to patients, but also brings a huge burden to the lives of patients and their families. At present, epilepsy detection is still achieved through the observation of electroencephalography (EEG) by medical staff. However, this process takes a long time and consumes energy, which will create a huge workload to medical staff. Therefore, it is particularly important to realize the automatic detection of epilepsy. This paper introduces, in detail, the overall framework of EEG-based automatic epilepsy identification and the typical methods involved in each step. Aiming at the core modules, that is, signal acquisition analog front end (AFE), feature extraction and classifier selection, method summary and theoretical explanation are carried out. Finally, the future research directions in the field of automatic detection of epilepsy are prospected.