prometheus / prometheus/client_python

Error on ingesting samples that are too old or are too far into the future

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Python
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Description

Hi!

Faced strange situation with timestamps.

Briefly:

  1. If timestamp is taken from datetime.datetime.now() - everything is ok.
  2. If timestamp is parsed from the date which looks same - I got warning in Prometheus server log about bad datetime and metric is not shown.

Here is code example with comments about which metrics works and which don't:

import datetime
import sys
import time
import pytz

from prometheus_client import (
    start_http_server,
)
from prometheus_client.core import (
    GaugeMetricFamily,
    REGISTRY,
)


class BugDemoMetricsCollector:

    def collect(self):
        dt_format = '%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S.%f %z'
        dt_now = datetime.datetime.now(tz=pytz.timezone('UTC'))
        print(dt_now)
        # Works
        gobj = GaugeMetricFamily('FooMetricGood', '')
        gobj.add_metric([], 123, timestamp=dt_now.timestamp())
        yield gobj
        # Works too
        dt_now_str = dt_now.strftime(dt_format)
        dt_parsed = datetime.datetime.strptime(dt_now_str, dt_format)
        gobj = GaugeMetricFamily('FooMetricGoodToo', '')
        gobj.add_metric([], 456, timestamp=dt_parsed.timestamp())
        yield gobj
        # Does not work, but same date
        dt_custom_str = '2021-11-11_18-12-59.000000 +0000'
        dt_parsed_from_custom = datetime.datetime.strptime(dt_custom_str, dt_format)
        gobj = GaugeMetricFamily('FooMetricNotWorking', '')
        gobj.add_metric([], 789987, timestamp=dt_parsed_from_custom.timestamp())
        yield gobj


def main():
    start_http_server(8080)
    REGISTRY.register(BugDemoMetricsCollector())
    while True:
        time.sleep(1)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.exit(main())

Message from Prometheus log about trouble metric:

prometheus-prometheus-1  | ts=2021-11-11T13:41:01.895Z caller=scrape.go:1563 level=warn component="scrape manager" scrape_pool=services target=http://192.168.64.1:8080/metrics msg="Error on ingesting samples that are too old or are too far into the future" num_dropped=1

But date is correct, here is Python code for used date and format:

>>> datetime.datetime.strptime('2021-11-11_18-12-59.000000 +0000', '%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S.%f %z')
datetime.datetime(2021, 11, 11, 18, 12, 59, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc)

I've spent more than one day trying to google, read docs and resolve it - no results.

Any help will be very appreciated.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the supplied BugDemoMetricsCollector example and compare the current timestamp with the hard-coded 2021 timestamp in the scrape output. Inspect the client_python timestamp handling and verify the behavior against Prometheus's ingestion warning; done means the reported discrepancy is explained and a regression test covers the relevant case.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
prometheus, python
Domain
observability
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
38/100

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