#Time series selector

Selectors allow selecting and filtering of a set of time series.

#Simple Selector

In the simplest form you need to specify only a metric name.

#Syntax

 <line>                 ::= <metric_name_pattern>
 <metric_name_pattern>  ::= simple pattern

The metric name pattern syntax is simple pattern.

#Examples

This example selects all time series that have the go_memstats_alloc_bytes metric name:

go_memstats_alloc_bytes

This example selects all time series with metric names starts with go_memstats_:

go_memstats_*

This example selects all time series with metric names starts with go_ except go_memstats_:

!go_memstats_* go_*

#Advanced Selector

It is possible to filter these time series further by appending a comma separated list of label matchers in curly braces ({}).

#Syntax

 <line>                 ::= [ <metric_name_pattern> ]{ <list_of_selectors> }
 <metric_name_pattern>  ::= simple pattern
 <list_of_selectors>    ::= a comma separated list <label_name><op><label_value_pattern>
 <label_name>           ::= an exact label name
 <op>                   ::= [ '=', '!=', '=~', '!~', '=*', '!*' ]
 <label_value_pattern>  ::= a label value pattern, depends on <op>

The metric name pattern syntax is simple pattern.

Label matching operators:

• =: Match labels that are exactly equal to the provided string.
• !=: Match labels that are not equal to the provided string.
• =~: Match labels that regex-match the provided string.
• !~: Match labels that do not regex-match the provided string.
• =*: Match labels that simple-pattern-match the provided string.
• !*: Match labels that do not simple-pattern-match the provided string.

#Examples

This example selects all time series that:

• have the node_cooling_device_cur_state metric name and
• label type value not equal to Fan:

node_cooling_device_cur_state{type!="Fan"}

This example selects all time series that:

• have the node_filesystem_size_bytes metric name and
• label device value is either /dev/nvme0n1p1 or /dev/nvme0n1p2 and
• label fstype is equal to ext4

node_filesystem_size_bytes{device=~"/dev/nvme0n1p1$|/dev/nvme0n1p2$",fstype="ext4"}

Label matchers can also be applied to metric names by matching against the internal __name__ label.

For example, the expression node_filesystem_size_bytes is equivalent to {__name__="node_filesystem_size_bytes"}. This allows using all operators (other than =*) for metric names matching.

The following expression selects all metrics that have a name starting with node_:

{__name__=*"node_*"}