topic Re: Why am I getting a scheduled search "datetime strftime() error", and some panels fail to render in the scheduled PDF email? in Dashboards & Visualizations

Why am I getting a scheduled search "datetime strftime() error", and some panels fail to render in the scheduled PDF email?

ejharts2015 — Wed, 02 Dec 2015 23:08:37 GMT

I have a dashboard which loads a bunch of scheduled reports. This dashboard is emailed to me via pdf at 6 pm everyday. The dashboard loads/works fine, however, the pdf doesn't show all the panels.

The first panel displays correctly:
Here is the search:

index=_internal source=*license_usage.log* type=Usage earliest=@d-6h latest=@d+18h | fields b,idx,_time   | timechart span=1h sum(b) by idx  | foreach * [eval <<FIELD>>='<<FIELD>>'/1024/1024/1024]

The Second panel doesn't display at all, with no error. It's just blank.
Here is the search:

index=_internal source=*license_usage.log* type=Usage earliest=@d-6h latest=@d+18h | fields b,idx,_time   | timechart span=1h sum(b) by idx  | addcoltotals | fillnull value=TOTAL | search _time=TOTAL |  foreach * [eval <<FIELD>>='<<FIELD>>'/1024/1024/1024]

The final panel has the following error: "year=1 is before 1900; the datetime strftime() methods require year >= 1900"
Here is the search:

index=_internal source=*license_usage.log* type=Usage earliest=@d-6h latest=@d+18h | fields b,idx,_time   | timechart span=1h sum(b) by idx  | addcoltotals | fillnull value=TOTAL | foreach * [eval <<FIELD>>='<<FIELD>>'/1024/1024/1024]

What is making the last two panels fail to render via the scheduled pdf?

Re: Why am I getting a scheduled search "datetime strftime() error", and some panels fail to render in the scheduled PDF email?

ggiessen — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 12:59:06 GMT

It looks like convert is having issues...

add this to your query and pdf export works fine:

| rename _time as Date | convert ctime(Date) timeformat="%Y-%m-%d"

Re: Why am I getting a scheduled search "datetime strftime() error", and some panels fail to render in the scheduled PDF email?

ejharts2015 — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 16:44:12 GMT

It's very weird that that worked... but thanks! It was driving me crazy 🙂

Re: Why am I getting a scheduled search "datetime strftime() error", and some panels fail to render in the scheduled PDF email?

darrend — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 13:45:25 GMT

I had the same issue on a customers site this morning.

This was just after an upgrade from 6.2.x to 6.3.x, it appears that if the _time field is present on some results then it cannot be null value(or possibly non-date value) on other results. This empty/null value was caused by the addtotals command for us.

This only appears to affect the pdf generation, the screen rendered fine.

Re: Why am I getting a scheduled search "datetime strftime() error", and some panels fail to render in the scheduled PDF email?

kfir_fireglass — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 09:53:22 GMT

Experiencing the same issue. Also for me it affects only my pdf generation.

Couldn't find any workaround. I eventually removed the time field from the report.

Re: Why am I getting a scheduled search "datetime strftime() error", and some panels fail to render in the scheduled PDF email?

RobertaRimondo — Tue, 15 May 2018 13:01:15 GMT

Same problem here, the addtotals command caused the error message above when exporting to PDF. Workaround: simply renaming the _time field with a different name (I used "Month") in the final table. It works!

Re: Why am I getting a scheduled search "datetime strftime() error", and some panels fail to render in the scheduled PDF email?

kira01 — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 03:57:56 GMT

@ejharts2015
how did you schedule email of dashboard pdf?
I want to schedule pdf delivery of dashboard using one of the conf files. But unable to do so. Can you help?

Re: Why am I getting a scheduled search "datetime strftime() error", and some panels fail to render in the scheduled PDF email?

ejharts2015 — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 13:33:48 GMT

What issue are you having with it?