Using variables (CORE)

Query variables

Variables can be specified using double curly braces, such as "{{ci_environment_slug}}" (added in GitLab 12.7).

Support for the "%{ci_environment_slug}" format was removed in GitLab 13.0. Queries that continue to use the old format will show no data.

Predefined variables

GitLab supports a limited set of CI variables in the Prometheus query. This is particularly useful for identifying a specific environment, for example with ci_environment_slug. The supported variables are:

• ci_environment_slug
• kube_namespace
• ci_project_name
• ci_project_namespace
• ci_project_path
• ci_environment_name
• __range

NOTE: Note: Variables for Prometheus queries must be lowercase.

__range

The __range variable is useful in Prometheus range vector selectors. Its value is the total number of seconds in the dashboard's time range. For example, if the dashboard time range is set to 8 hours, the value of __range is 28800s.

User-defined variables

Variables can be defined in a custom dashboard YAML file.

Query variables from URL

Introduced in GitLab 13.0.

GitLab supports setting custom variables through URL parameters. Surround the variable name with double curly braces ({{example}}) to interpolate the variable in a query:

avg(sum(container_memory_usage_bytes{container_name!="{{pod}}"}) by (job)) without (job)  /1024/1024/1024'

The URL for this query would be:

http://gitlab.com/<user>/<project>/-/environments/<environment_id>/metrics?dashboard=.gitlab%2Fdashboards%2Fcustom.yml&pod=POD