Add query alias so that series overrides can be applied easily

[fpanwaskar]

Add query alias so that series overrides can be applied easily

[marcusolsson]

Yes, it's a very common pattern. Fortunately, in recent Grafana versions, renaming fields is now built into Grafana itself. Try adding a "Organize field" transformation to your query.

Would this support your use case?

[fpanwaskar]

Hi there how would I use the "Organise Fields" to apply series overrides?

In the example my response will look like:
{
"data":[
{
"@timestamp":"2020-11-30T08:36:24.110Z",
"price":2575.5,
"timestamp":1606725384110,
"orderType":"1""name":"orderAdd"
},
{
"@timestamp":"2020-11-30T08:36:13.755Z",
"price":45.91,
"timestamp":1606725384110,
"orderType":"1",
"name":"orderAdd"
}, ...
]
}

In my query I isolate the following paths:

$.data[].timestamp
$.data[].prices
$.data[*].name

I want to match on the value of name attribute to apply series overrides/ Although I set the regex to /orderAdd/ I get no match.

Could you provide some guidance on what might the issue?

This works with the associated pull request as I am able to provide an alias of orderAdd which is then mapped to the name.

[marcusolsson]

By default, the field name is set to the name of the property referenced by your JSON Path.

In your example, you'd end up with a query result like this:

timestamp	name	price
1606725384110	orderAdd	2575.5
1606725384110	orderAdd	45.91

With the Organize fields transform, you can for example rename the name field to action. Either way you can use it to specify the field to apply your override to.

The reason why you're not getting a match for /orderAdd/ is because orderAdd is a value in the name/action field rather than the name of it.

It sounds like you'd like a query response that looks something like this:

timestamp	orderAdd
1606725384110	2575.5
1606725384110	45.91

If this is what you're looking for, this is not supported at the moment (and wouldn't be solved with aliases). You can read more about wide and long data frames here: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/developers/plugins/data-frames/#data-frames-as-time-series.

Let me know if I've misunderstood your use case!

[fpanwaskar]

Thanks for the explanation. I can modify the response to look like that, but that does not feel right for an api implementation.

I was looking at the conversion to a DataFrame and in MutableDataFrame when the field is added any supplied config is added.

I think field.config.displayName is supported, could a possible solution be to give the user the ability to set an optional displayName on the query field?

[marcusolsson]

Yeah, I agree it's not ideal for an API response.

Could you maybe create multiple data source queries add filter the items in the JSON Path and override the display name for each?

[fpanwaskar]

Yes I could create multiple data source queries in fact that is what I am doing now. How would I override the display name, as this is not currently supported?

I was thinking that as part of the query entry an optional displayName could be supplied. Is there another way?

[fpanwaskar]

Hi @marcusolsson,

Overriding the displayName would work. Are you happy with as a solution? It could be an optional query parameter.

The override displayName placeholder could be the current displayName.

[marcusolsson]

I feel like we're discussing two different issues.

As I was trying to show with my last screenshot, Grafana already lets you override the display name of a field using field overrides. However, that will only change the name of the field. In the screenshot above, I override the price field to orderAdd and orderRemove for each data source query.

The problem you seem to be having is that you'd like to turn the following response:

timestamp	name	price
1606725384110	orderAdd	2575.5
1606725384110	orderAdd	45.91
1606725384110	orderRemove	12.23

into

timestamp	orderAdd	orderRemove
1606725384110	2575.5
1606725384110	45.91
1606725384110		12.23

It seems to me that the root of your problem is that you want to convert between Wide and narrow data, which is a more complicated problem than simply changing the display name. Since this is a transformation that you'd want to do for a range of different panels, I'm reluctant to implementing this in this (or any) plugin.

If by "overriding display name", you mean that you want to select another field to use as the field name—essentially rotating part of the table—it's a simplification of the problem I outline above.

I want to emphasize that while I agree that this is a very useful feature, I think it's out of scope for this (any) plugin. I think it more be more suitable to implement this in Grafana itself, and offer the feature to all data sources. Please let me know if I've misunderstood your problem in any way.