Support to query cinder resources filter by time comparison operators¶
Support users can query resources by specifying the time comparison operators along with created_at or updated_at, and cinder will return all which matches the time condition.
Problem description¶
Cinder (also other projects, like heat and neutron) API only support filtering resources by discrete values, even though cinder resources have timestamp fields, users can only query resources operated at given time, not during given period. Users may be interested in resources operated in a specific period for monitoring or statistics purpose but currently they have to retrieve and filter the resources by themselves. This change can bring facility to users and also improve the efficiency of timestamp based query.
Use Cases¶
In large scale environment, lots of resources were created in system, for tracing the change of resource, user or manage system only need to get those resources which was creatded or changed from some time point, instead of querying all resources every time to see which was changed.
Proposed change¶
Introduce six time comparison operators along with created_at or updated_at fields for retrieving resources more flexible. User needs to specify the operator first, a colon (:) as a separator, and then the time. One step closer, we will also support multi-operators querying at once, a comma (,) as the separator.
Operator ‘gt’: Return results more recent than the specified time.
Operator ‘gte’: Return any results matching the specified time and also any more recent results.
Operator ‘eq’: Return any results matching the specified time exactly.
Operator ‘neq’: Return any results that do not match the specified time.
Operator ‘lt’: Return results older than the specified time.
Operator ‘lte’: Return any results matching the specified time and also any older results.
Alternatives¶
As discussed in ‘Problem description’ section, user can retrieve and then filter resources by themselves, but this approach is neither convenient nor efficient. Leaving filtering work to database can utilize the optimization of database engine and also reduce data transmitted from server to client.
Data model impact¶
None
REST API impact¶
List API will accept new query string parameters. User can pass the operator and time to the list API url to retrieve resources created or updated since or prior to a specific time. This changes also need to bump the microversion of API to keep forward compatibility.
GET /v3/{project_id}/volumes/{detail}?updated_at=gt:2016-01-01T01:00:00,lt:2016-12-01T01:00:00
Security impact¶
None
Notifications impact¶
None.
Other end user impact¶
Python client may add help to inform users this new filter. Python client support dynamic assigning search fields so it is easy for it to support this new filter.
Performance Impact¶
As discussed in ‘Alternatives’ section, performance can be improved for timestamp based query by utilizing database engine. Additional, it also can add index to improve querying performance.
Other deployer impact¶
None
Developer impact¶
None
Implementation¶
Assignee(s)¶
- Primary assignee:
wanghao<sxmatch1986@gmail.com>
Work Items¶
Add API filter
Add querying support in sql
Add related test
Dependencies¶
None
Testing¶
Unit test to test if those filters can be correctly applied.
Tempest test if change filter work correctly from API perspective.
Documentation Impact¶
The cinder API documentation will need to be updated to reflect the REST API changes.
References¶
[1]: https://developer.openstack.org/api-ref/image/v2/?expanded=list-images-detail#v2-comparison-ops
