Filters
StackState Self-hosted v5.0.x
Last updated
StackState Self-hosted v5.0.x
Last updated
This page describes StackState version 5.0.
The View Filters panel on the left of the StackState UI allows you to filter the components (topology), events and traces displayed in each perspective. Applied filters can be saved as a view to open directly in the future.
Topology filters can be used to select a sub-set of topology components to be shown in any one of the available perspectives. You can browse your topology using basic filters or build an advanced topology filter that zooms in on a specific area of your topology using the StackState in-built query language (STQL). Read more about:
The main way to filter topology is using the available basic filters. When you set a filter, the open perspective will update to show only the visualization or data for the subset of your topology that matches the filter. Setting multiple filters will narrow down your search further. You can set more than one value for each filter to expand your search
Layers, Domains, Environments and Component types
Filter by the component details included when components are imported or created.
Component health
Only include components with the named health state as reported by the associated health check.
Component labels
Only include components with a specific label.
Include components
Components named here will be included in the topology in addition to the components returned from other filters.
You can define custom labels to make searching for information easier.
To filter the topology using basic filters, click the View Filters button on the left and select Basic under Filter Topology.
The example below uses basic filters to return components that match the following conditions:
In the Domain security check
AND has a Health state of Clear OR Deviating
OR is the Component with the name ai_engine
This same filter could also be written as an advanced topology filter using STQL.
You can use the in-built StackState Query Language (STQL) to build an advanced topology filter that zooms in on a specific area of your topology.
To filter the topology using an STQL query, click the View Filters button on the left and select Advanced under Filter Topology.
The STQL query example below will return components that match the following conditions:
In the Domain security check
AND has a Health state of Clear OR Deviating
OR is the Component with the name ai_engine
This same filter result could also be returned with basic filters, see basic topology filters.
You can switch between basic and advanced filtering by selecting Basic or Advanced under Filter Topology in the View Filters panel.
It is always possible to switch from Basic to Advanced filtering. The selected basic filters will be converted directly to an STQL query. For simple queries it is also possible to switch from Advanced to Basic filtering, however, some advanced queries are not compatible with basic filters.
➡️ Learn more about the compatibility of basic and advanced topology filters
Some advanced filtering options are compatible with basic filtering, but cannot be set or adjusted as a basic filter. When these advanced filters are set in a way that is compatible with basic filtering, the box Other filters will be shown in the View Filters panel with details of the affected components:
withNeighborsOf - when an advanced filter contains the function withNeighborsOf, the number of components whose neighbors are queried for is shown in the Other filters box. To be compatible with basic filtering, a withNeighborsOf function must be joined to other filters using an OR operator.
identifier - when an advanced filter filters components by identifier, the number of component identifiers queried is reported in the Other filters box. To be compatible with basic filtering, an identifier filter must be specified and joined to other filters using the operator OR identifier IN (...).
The Other filters box will only contain details of advanced filters that have been set and are compatible with basic filtering.
To optimize performance, a limit is placed on the amount of elements that can be loaded to produce a topology visualization. The filtering limit has a default value of 10000 elements. If a basic filter or advanced filter query exceeds the filtering limit, a message will be shown on screen and no topology visualization will be displayed.
Note that the filtering limit is applied to the total amount of elements that need to be loaded and not the amount of elements that will ultimately be displayed.
In the example below, we first LOAD all neighbors of every component in our topology and then DISPLAY only the ones that belong to the applications layer. This would likely fail with a filtering limit error as it requires all components in the topology to be loaded.
To successfully produce this topology visualization, we would need to either re-write the query to keep the number of components loaded below the configured filtering limit, or increase the filtering limit. By fitering for only components in the applications layer, we will DISPLAY the same components as the query above, without first needing to LOAD all components. This query is therefore less likely to result in a filtering limit error.
If required, you can manually configure the topology filtering limit.
The View Filters panel on the left of the StackState UI can be used to filter the events shown in the Events Perspective and in the Event list in the right panel View summary tab.
The following event filters are available:
Category
Show only events from one or more categories.
Type
Click the Type filter box to open a list of all event types that have been generated for the currently filtered components in the current time window. You can select one or more event types to refine the events displayed.
Source
Events can be generated by StackState or retrieved from an external source system, such as Kubernetes or ServiceNow, by an integration. Click the Source filter box to open a list of all source systems for events that have been generated for the currently filtered components in the current time window. Select one or more source systems to see only those events.
Tags
Relevant event properties will be added as tags when an event is retrieved from an external system. For example status:open or status:production. This can help to identify events relevant to a specific problem or environment.
Traces shown in the Traces Perspective can be filtered based on two properties of the spans they contain:
Span types
Span tags
For example, if you filter the trace list for all spans of type database, this will return all traces that have at least one span whose type is database.
To update the existing view with the currently applied filters, click Save view at the top of the screen. To save the current filters as a new view, click Save view as.
➡️ Learn more about StackState views.
To clear any filters you have added and return to the saved view filters or initial clean state, click the view name at the top of the screen. Alternatively, you can select Reset view from the Save view dropdown menu at the top of the screen, or Reset from the ... menu in the right panel View summary tab.
