Kibana: x-axis labels for "date range" aggregations are unusable

[tbragin]

When creating any "date range" visualization, labels are always vertical, always attempt to show the full date, and are always cut off.

As far as I can tell, it behaves the same way as in Kibana 4, except there the labels were horizontal, so it's not a major regression, but something we should still address.

A couple of thoughts:

• Ideally, we should have a more sane default (show the ranges themselves horizontally?)
• But more often than not it makes sense to mark these ranges with custom labels. For instance, in a business scenario you may be looking at months or quarters, so we should allow someone to enter a custom label for the range, such as "2017Q1", much like we do for filters in the Filter agg.

[thomasneirynck]

this was fixed with the Point Series improvements.

e.g.:

[vijaygoturi]

Hi tbragin,

even i am also looking for your second thought. Did you find any workaround?

[tbragin]

@vijaygoturi Looks like this should be fixed in 5.4. If you upgrade to latest minor version of Kibana (5.6.x) and find it's still a problem, you should file a new issue.

[vijaygoturi]

@tbragin I am working on 5.6 version and still not able to custom label the data range.

[tbragin]

@alexfrancoeur @ppisljar @thomasneirynck Are you able to repro? Do you want a new issue filed, or reopen this one?

[ppisljar]

the only thing introduced by 5.4 is the ability to rotate the labels (have them either horizontally or vertically).

we did not introduce an option to generate custom labels.

[vijaygoturi]

Atleast how can blank the date range ? I do not wish to show the range along the x-axis.

[ppisljar]

that is possible, either hide the labels or hide whole axis:

[vijaygoturi]

@ppisljar I need the labels along the x-axis points. But, I want to hide the date range that is appearing due to sub-bucket added for the date range. On unchecking the options, only the labels along the axis are hidded, not the date range label.

[ppisljar]

could you post a screenshot of your aggregation setup ? (the data tab in editor)

[vijaygoturi]

@ppisljar

Even if i specify something in custom label, it only changes the end part of the label and not the date range. I wish to avoid the display of the date range

[ppisljar]

could you try to use Split Bucket Split Series instead of Split Chart ? (your first bucket aggregation)
or do you have a specific reason to use Split Chart ?

[vijaygoturi]

@ppisljar There is no split bucket option under Add Sub Buckets.

I want to filter the records for the past 12 weeks from the current date. So I used split chart

[ppisljar]

sorry, i meant split series

[vijaygoturi]

@ppisljar Thanks. I am getting what I needed along the x-axis, but the range is now appearing along the y-axis labels.

Can I avoid the date range along the y-axis , and replace with some meaningful custom labels without the range?

Moreover after adding the split series, whatever the color codes that i am adding to the graphs are not getting correctly reflected in the shared iframe.

[ppisljar]

i am not really sure what you mean by the range on y axis labels ...
but you could hide the y axis labels all together (probably not what you are after)
the other thing next to the y axis is title ... which is based on the metric used, but you can always override it under the y-axis settings for each of the y axes.

[vijaygoturi]

@ppisljar My overridden values appear at the end of the date range

The one in the black circle is the custom label.

[ppisljar]

this looks like a bug specific to date range agg .... could you open a separate issue for it ? thanks!

[vijaygoturi]

Is there any category of bug for this?

[ppisljar]

just assign it to me and i'll make sure the right labels are assigned.

[vijaygoturi]

@ppisljar How can i assign it to you?

Date range appears along side the custom label in "Split Series" sub-bucket #14786

[vijaygoturi]

@ppisljar Another issue is the color codes that are assigned during visualization are not getting reflected in the shared iframe

[alexfrancoeur]

@vijaygoturi I assigned to @ppisljar and added the appropriate labels. I believe
your most recent comment may be related to https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/13653.

Just to confirm, this issue has been re-opened because we currently do not allow you to customize the x-axis date label. @thomasneirynck @ppisljar is this as simple as adding support for the date formatter function in painless?

[ppisljar]

The dates are formatted by the vislib, we would need to add support for formatting there.
from the code perspective it should be quite simple. if we get a format provided we would just apply it there. We need to figure out how to expose this in UI however.

[alexfrancoeur]

As a bandaid, couldn't we add a dropdown with a number of common date formatting options? We won't allow for full customization (to start) but instead common date formats. This could be placed directly under x-axis and serve as a quick win for us.

[wylieconlon]

I think the various bugs and issues here have been resolved by now, and the remaining issue is open separately: https://github.com/elastic/kibana/issues/13784