Textbox variable: Option to supply value when set to empty

[davewat]

Please include this information:

What Grafana version are you using? 5.3.1

What datasource are you using? Elasticsearch

What OS are you running grafana on? CentOS 7.4

What did you do? Empty Textbox for Lucene query

What was the expected result? Returns all results

What happened instead? Returns nothing

We are using the new Textbox template variable to create Lucene queries for Elasticsearch. We supply a default value, however, if a user then deletes the value, the query submitted will be an empty query. Would be useful if there was an option to supply an "on empty" value, that will be the default query if the user clears the text box, as the average user may not know the result of the empty set query (zero results). Would also be useful to have an option to show or hide the "on empty" value to the user, based on preference of the dashboard creator. This may have uses outside of Textbox and Elasticsearch/ Lucene as well.

[davewat]

Adding additional screenshots of functionality:
1- Without this change, or with the "Empty Value" disabled, if the user clears the TextBox the Lucene query is passed "empty" which results in zero results. The user would expect to get all results instead.
2- With the empty value set to "*" (useful for Lucene but could be something else depending on use case), the value of * is sent, and results in all fields. More technical users preferred this.
3 - With the View Empty Value also checked, when the field is cleared, the default empty value is also shown, to indicate what is was changed to, to aid some users understanding.

[davewat]

View of updated form:

[davewat]

@marefr Might we see this in 5.4 beta? Thanks.
#13752

[marefr]

@davewat v5.4.0-beta1 is already out. Unfortunately this will have to wait until we have time to review it properly.

[hugohaggmark]

I think this is still a valid feature request that shouldn't be very hard to add.

[avlitman]

For me as a user it’s very critical.. It’s breaks the panel. are you planing to
fix it ? I can see a lot of users notice this issue.. this bug from 2018 and still a lot of users hit this issue.
it will be very appreciated if you can fix this important issue.
Also can be a good solution to add a flag that when empty convert to null.
Thank you !

[VladislavYak]

+1

[hugohaggmark]

@pkolyvas adding you to this as well

[tommysitehost]

This is very useful feature that would increase usability for textbox variable.

[aminabromand]

current possible workaround:
use a regex query:
my_metric{ my_field=~".*$mytextbox.*" }

if mytextbox is empty the regex will look like .*.* and thus match everything.

[github-actions]

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