Graphite template URL from query string/target pairs should not be escaped

[streadway]

Reproduction:

Show template variables
Add template variable xxx to be packets_received
Add Frame with URL http://graphite/render/?target=stats_counts.statsd.packets_received
Verify graph shows something
Click on Frame Source
In target field, replace packets_received with template variable {{xxx}}

Actual:

Graph no longer shows No Data
Frame Source is now:

http://graphite/render/?target=stats_counts.statsd.%7B%7Bxxx%7D%7D

Expected:

To show the same graph without the template variable
Frame Source to not escape the template braces:

http://graphite/render/?target=stats_counts.statsd.{{xxx}}

[streadway]

This happen in both directions, also when directly editing the frame source URL or the breakout query parameters.

[juliusv]

@streadway Thanks for the report!

@stuartnelson3 This would be great to fix soon (mid to high priority).

[streadway]

In the meantime for those that run into this, I have this in my history:

pbpaste | sed -e 's/%7D%7D/}}/g' -e 's/%7B%7B/{{/g' | pbcopy

After the escaping happens, I copy the frame source, run that command then paste it again.

[grobie]

It's necessary to escape the parameters before constructing a URL. For a simple target with only a metric name this might work, for targets including functions with parentheses, spaces, equal signs or even ampersands, not escaping will break the URL.

It might be possible to postpone the escaping until after template variables have been evaluated and the request gets sent to graphite, but that depends on how the graphite URL gets stored internally. With the new graphite data source editor, it has to be ensured that repeated decomposing/composing of the parameters does not mutate the URL.

It seems to me that this issue is not so much about escaping but handling of template variables in graphite URLs.