Support filtering runs by start_time

[harupy]

Signed-off-by: harupy 17039389+harupy@users.noreply.github.com

What changes are proposed in this pull request?

Support filtering runs by start_time.

How is this patch tested?

Unit tests

Release Notes

Is this a user-facing change?

• No. You can skip the rest of this section.
• Yes. Give a description of this change to be included in the release notes for MLflow users.

(Details in 1-2 sentences. You can just refer to another PR with a description if this PR is part of a larger change.)

What component(s), interfaces, languages, and integrations does this PR affect?

Components

• area/artifacts: Artifact stores and artifact logging
• area/build: Build and test infrastructure for MLflow
• area/docs: MLflow documentation pages
• area/examples: Example code
• area/model-registry: Model Registry service, APIs, and the fluent client calls for Model Registry
• area/models: MLmodel format, model serialization/deserialization, flavors
• area/projects: MLproject format, project running backends
• area/scoring: MLflow Model server, model deployment tools, Spark UDFs
• area/server-infra: MLflow Tracking server backend
• area/tracking: Tracking Service, tracking client APIs, autologging

Interface

• area/uiux: Front-end, user experience, plotting, JavaScript, JavaScript dev server
• area/docker: Docker use across MLflow's components, such as MLflow Projects and MLflow Models
• area/sqlalchemy: Use of SQLAlchemy in the Tracking Service or Model Registry
• area/windows: Windows support

Language

• language/r: R APIs and clients
• language/java: Java APIs and clients
• language/new: Proposals for new client languages

Integrations

• integrations/azure: Azure and Azure ML integrations
• integrations/sagemaker: SageMaker integrations
• integrations/databricks: Databricks integrations

How should the PR be classified in the release notes? Choose one:

• rn/breaking-change - The PR will be mentioned in the "Breaking Changes" section
• rn/none - No description will be included. The PR will be mentioned only by the PR number in the "Small Bugfixes and Documentation Updates" section
• rn/feature - A new user-facing feature worth mentioning in the release notes
• rn/bug-fix - A user-facing bug fix worth mentioning in the release notes
• rn/documentation - A user-facing documentation change worth mentioning in the release notes

[dbczumar]

I suppose it's a bit odd to do > / < lexical comparison on e.g. artifact location, but it doesn't seem outwardly harmful.

[harupy]

I agree. Ideally, only the start_time column should be allowed to use [">", ">=", "!=", "=", "<", "<="]

[harupy]

VALID_STRING_ATTRIBUTE_COMPARATORS is used here:

mlflow/mlflow/utils/search_utils.py

Lines 340 to 349 in 4d4b462

	@classmethod
	def is_attribute(cls, key_type, comparator):
	if key_type == cls._ATTRIBUTE_IDENTIFIER:
	if comparator not in cls.VALID_STRING_ATTRIBUTE_COMPARATORS:
	raise MlflowException(
	"Invalid comparator '{}' not one of "
	"'{}".format(comparator, cls.VALID_STRING_ATTRIBUTE_COMPARATORS)
	)
	return True
	return False

We could:

1. Define VALID_STARTTIME_ATTRIBUTE_COMPARATORS
2. Then fix is_attribute:

         @classmethod 
	 def is_attribute(cls, key_type, key_name, comparator): 
	     if key_type == cls._ATTRIBUTE_IDENTIFIER: 
                 if comparator not in cls.VALID_STARTTIME_ATTRIBUTE_COMPARATORS:
                     raise ...
	         elif comparator not in cls.VALID_STRING_ATTRIBUTE_COMPARATORS: 
	             raise MlflowException( 
	                 "Invalid comparator '{}' not one of " 
	                 "'{}".format(comparator, cls.VALID_STRING_ATTRIBUTE_COMPARATORS) 
	             ) 
	         return True 
	     return False 

[dbczumar]

How about VALID_NUMERIC_ATTRIBUTE_COMPARATORS?

[harupy]

Sounds good to me!

[dbczumar]

LGTM!

[harupy]

I encountered another issue. Combining comparison expressions causes an error:

In this image, I set the start-time filter to Last 24 hours and type metrics.m2 > 0.2 in the search query textbox.

I'm investingating why this is happening.

---

The request payload in the image above looks like:

{
    "experiment_ids": [
        "0"
    ],
    "filter": "metrics.m2 > 0.2 && attributes.start_time >= 1634865257337",
    "run_view_type": "ACTIVE_ONLY",
    "max_results": 100,
    "order_by": [
        "attributes.start_time DESC"
    ],
    "page_token": null
}

The filter expressions are joined by && which needs to be replaced with and.

---

Found the culprit:

mlflow/mlflow/server/js/src/experiment-tracking/components/ExperimentPage.js

Lines 204 to 210 in 035dcbd

	let filter = searchInput;
	if (startTime) {
	if (filter.length > 0) {
	filter = `${filter} && ${startTime}`;
	} else {
	filter = startTime;
	}

[harupy]

Suggested change

	if key == "start_time":
	if key in cls.NUMERIC_ATTRIBUTES: