Sort series on X axis

[bobrik]

What Grafana version are you using?

5.2.3

What datasource are you using?

Prometheus

What did you do?

Set Graph X axis mode to "Series" to see CPU load distribution between cores.

What was the expected result?

Cores are sorted by their name: cpu00, cpu01, ..., cpu31

What happened instead?

Cores are randomly sorted on each refresh:

Query is:

(avg(sum(rate(node_cpu{instance="$instance", cpu=~"$cpu", mode=~"$mode"}[$rate])) without (mode)) without (instance), "cpu", "cpu0$1", "cpu", "cpu(.)")

If X axis is time, then the legend is sorted properly:

[torkelo]

The order in which series are drawn is the same as the order returned by your Prometheus query, you need to sort your series in your query.

[bobrik]

That's a great idea, do you know a way to do it? From what I can tell, Prometheus doesn't support it:

• Consider supporting sorting by label value prometheus/prometheus#414

[bobrik]

Apparently sorting in Grafana works if Instant is unchecked, but it's quite wasteful in terms of compute power.

[bobrik]

@torkelo can this be reopened?

[josephine-rueckert]

@torkelo sorting by anything other than the value is still not supported in PromQL and from what I read in the following issue, it doesn't seem like they want to add this as they think this is a presentation feature which should rather be available in Grafana.

I'd rather implement UI/presentation related features twice in graph consoles and grafana than cluttering PromQL and fighting an endless battle about what to add and what not "sort_by_label is already part of the language, there my alias() function makes sense as well".
prometheus/prometheus#1533

[mtanda]

I check the Prometheus implementation, it only sort series for range query.
https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/blob/v2.15.2/promql/engine.go#L516

Prometheus need to support topk, it shouldn't sort for instant query.

[superawesome]

Bumping this for visibility. This would be very useful, as Prometheus has closed the PR linked above without merging it. It appears they believe Grafana should implement this sort of functionality.

[kesor]

Sorting data of a time series in the Prometheus query sorts each time bucket returned from Prometheus. But when the X-Axis is set to "Series" with a "Total" aggregation function (part of Grafana) it is not really possible to sort this in the query like this.

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had activity in the last year. It will be closed in 30 days if no further activity occurs. Please feel free to leave a comment if you believe the issue is still relevant. Thank you for your contributions!

[Roemer]

This is still relevant I suppose.

[bobrik]

Prometheus gained support for label sorting for instant queries:

• promql: use natural sort in sort_by_label and sort_by_label_desc prometheus/prometheus#13411

I also added natural sorting there:

• promql: use natural sort in sort_by_label and sort_by_label_desc prometheus/prometheus#13411

I haven't tested it with Grafana, but it might just work these days.