Query Influxdb based on tags?

Question

I have started playing around with Influxdb v0.13 and I have some dummy values in my test db where id is a tag and value is a field:

> SELECT * FROM dummy
name: dummy
--------------
time                    id     value
1468276508161069051     1234    12345
1468276539152853428     613     352
1468276543470535110     613     4899
1468276553853436191     1234    12

I get no results returned when I run this query:

> SELECT * FROM dummy WHERE id=1234

but I do get the following when querying with the field instead:

> SELECT * FROM dummy WHERE value=12
name: dummy
--------------
time                    id     value
1468276553853436191     1234    12

Am I doing something wrong here? I thought the point of tags were to be queried (since they are indexed and fields are not), but they seem to break my queries.

Answer 1

It appears that Influx will treat every tag key and value we insert as string and this is evidently shown in their official documentation.

See: https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v0.13/guides/writing_data/

When writing points, you must specify an existing database in the db query parameter. See the HTTP section on the Write Syntax page for a complete list of the available query parameters. The body of the POST - we call this the Line Protocol - contains the time-series data that you wish to store. They consist of a measurement, tags, fields, and a timestamp. InfluxDB requires a measurement name. Strictly speaking, tags are optional but most series include tags to differentiate data sources and to make querying both easy and efficient. Both tag keys and tag values are strings.

Note: the text in bold.

Hence to filter by tag key value - the query must be enquoted.

Example:

SELECT * FROM dummy WHERE id='1234'