topic Losing space character when converting dashboard to HTML (which causes data loss) - Can this be avoided? in Dashboards & Visualizations

Losing space character when converting dashboard to HTML (which causes data loss) - Can this be avoided?

eroffol — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 18:15:05 GMT

There is a bug I found when I convert my simple XML dashboard to HTML.

On my simple dashboard, I have a search like this, which displays correctly:

...
| rename totalRecs as "Total Records Out"
| table "Total Records Out"
...

But, when I convert my dashboard to HTML, my rename loses a character space. The search ends up causing me to have missing data for the "Total Records Out" column because it got renamed to "Total RecordsOut"

...
| rename totalRecs as "Total RecordsOut" ...
| table "Total Records Out"
...

I guess I didn't really have a question here, just a minor bug/inconvenience.

Re: Losing space character when converting dashboard to HTML (which causes data loss) - Can this be avoided?

eroffol — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 18:16:05 GMT

I am using Splunk 6.2.3

Re: Losing space character when converting dashboard to HTML (which causes data loss) - Can this be avoided?

DalJeanis — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 21:22:06 GMT

Interesting. Just for kicks, you might reverse those two lines and see if it still happens, and which line it happens to. It worries me that where a line wraps might cause occasional random glitches... in which case any code change can introduce bugs elsewhere in the code.

Re: Losing space character when converting dashboard to HTML (which causes data loss) - Can this be avoided?

eroffol — Wed, 16 Aug 2017 18:43:04 GMT

My original post might have been a little misleading, my simple xml searches were all on one line.

... | rename totalRecs as "Total Records Out" | table "Total Records Out" ...

I didn't get a chance to try your idea because I had already made changes to that dashboard that I didn't want to lose. It seemed like when I added more search text before the rename, this behavior stopped

... | more search text | rename totalRecs as "Total Records Out" | table "Total Records Out" ...

Re: Losing space character when converting dashboard to HTML (which causes data loss) - Can this be avoided?

DalJeanis — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 18:55:34 GMT

@eroffol - that's one of the reasons I REALLY don't like to add spaces into a variable name, in any language. Way too much fiddly or squishy stuff happens. Okay, I'm moving your comment to an answer, and you can accept it when you get a chance. This is one of those things that unfortunately gets filed as "Unable to Reproduce".