RQL

Rollbar Query Language (RQL) provides a rich SQL-like interface to the data in Rollbar. RQL is bundled with Rollbar Analyze which also includes the Metrics API.

RQL supports running SELECT queries on two logical tables, item_occurrence and deploy. Basic GROUP BY, ORDER BY, LIMIT, and aggregation functions are available, as are arbitrary expressions in the WHERE clause.

Syntax

SELECT and FROM are required. WHERE, GROUP BY, ORDER BY, and LIMIT are optional.

SELECT * may be used as long as there is no GROUP BY clause. It will return a list of columns similar to the Occurrences tab on the Item Detail pages.

You can reference a selected column using its index, e.g. GROUP BY 1.

SQL keywords and built-in function names are case-insensitive (i.e. SELECT and select are both fine).

Column names should start with a lowercase letter and may contain letters, numbers, and periods (for specifying a JSON path). If you need any other characters (i.e. a hyphen, or to start with an uppercase letter), escape with backticks (i.e. request.headers.User-Agent).

Operators

• +, -, /, *, DIV, MOD
• AND, OR, NOT
• =, !=,
  <>, >, >=, <, <=, IN, NOT IN, BETWEEN,
  NOT BETWEEN, LIKE, NOT LIKE, IS, IS NOT

Built-in Functions

• count(*): counts all rows
• count(foo): counts rows where foo is not NULL
• count_distinct(foo): counts distinct rows where foo is not NULL
• sum(foo): sums the value of foo (for rows where foo is not NULL)
• avg(foo): average value of foo (for rows where foo is not NULL)
• min(foo): minimum value of foo
• max(foo): maximum value of foo
• unix_timestamp(): returns the current Unix timestamp, as an integer
• concat(str1, str2, ...): returns the string resulting from concatenating all arguments
• concat_ws(sep, str1, str2, ...): returns the string resulting from concatenating the second argument and beyond, separated by the first argument
• lower(str): converts str to lowercase
• upper(str): converts str to uppercase
• left(str, len): returns the len leftmost characters of str
• right(str, len): returns the len rightmost characters of str
• substring(str, pos): returns the substring from str starting at pos (all characters from pos until the end)
• substring(str, pos, len): returns a substring from str starting at pos, at most len characters
• locate(substr, str): returns the position of the first occurrence of substr in str. (1-indexed)
• locate(substr, str, pos): returns the position of the first occurrence of substr in str, starting the search at position pos
• char_length(str): returns the length of str in characters
• length(str): returns the length of str in bytes
• if(boolean_expr, value_if_true, value_if_false): evaluates to value_if_true if the expression boolean_expr evalutes to true, value_if_false otherwise

Performance considerations

RQL queries data from multiple databases and assembles the result set at the end. To optimize performance we moved the most frequently queried columns to a faster database. You can expect faster results in case your query uses the following columns only.

For further performance improvement, we suggest querying the necessary columns only and applying item (e.g., WHERE item.counter = 123) or timestamp (e.g., WHERE timestamp > unix_timestamp() - 86400) filters in each query.

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Although RQL supports all operations and functions listed above, you might experience slowness when using the GROUP BY statement.

Examples

To find all occurrences of item #47, grouped by request.user_ip with the total count, earliest timestamp, and most recent timestamp, ordered by total count descending and limited to the top 10 rows:

SELECT request.user_ip, min(timestamp), max(timestamp), count(*)
FROM item_occurrence
WHERE item.counter = 47
GROUP BY request.user_ip
ORDER BY count(*) DESC
LIMIT 10

To see the timestamp and message for all occurrences for Items #40 to #50:

SELECT timestamp, body.message.body
FROM item_occurrence
WHERE item.counter BETWEEN 40 AND 50

To see the occurrences of Items #1, 2, and 3:

SELECT *
FROM item_occurrence
WHERE item.counter IN (1,2,3)

To find items that affected the most IPs in the last 3 days, grouped by the item number and ordered by the distinct count of the number of user_ips descending:

SELECT item.counter
FROM item_occurrence
WHERE timestamp > unix_timestamp() - 60 * 60 * 24 * 3
GROUP BY item.counter
ORDER BY count_distinct(request.user_ip) desc

To see all the items with the User-Agent string python-requests/2.9.1 in a date range, ordered by timestamps descending:

SELECT * 
FROM item_occurrence 
WHERE `request.headers.User-Agent` = "python-requests/2.9.1"  
AND timestamp BETWEEN 1507566716 and 1510245116 
ORDER BY timestamp desc

To grab all the referrer domains Item #1234 came from, grouped by the domain and limited to the top 1000 rows:

SELECT substring(request.headers.Referer, locate('.', request.headers.Referer), locate('.', request.headers.Referer, locate('.', request.headers.Referer)) - locate('.', request.headers.Referer) - 1)
FROM item_occurrence
WHERE item.counter = 1234
GROUP BY 1
LIMIT 1000

To find all the occurrences of items that occurred on Safari version 9.x on the last day:

SELECT *
FROM item_occurrence
WHERE client.javascript.browser LIKE '%Version/9.%.% Safari/%'
AND timestamp > unix_timestamp() - 60 * 60 * 24

To grab the occurrence counts per item per day for the last three days:

SELECT timestamp div 86400, item.counter, count(*)
FROM item_occurrence
WHERE timestamp > unix_timestamp() - 60 * 60 * 24 * 3
GROUP BY 1, item.counter

Good to know

• RQL sometimes timeout unless you put a date range, such as WHERE timestamp > unix_timestamp() - 86400.
• When using GROUP BY or ORDER BY, ensure the group/order clause is also present in the SELECT clause.
• You cannot GROUP BY a function unless the same expression is in the SELECT clause.
• You can reference a column by its index in a GROUP BY statement, for example GROUP BY 1.
• You can share the URL with a co-worker and they'll see the same results you do, without rerunning the query.
• After a query has been completed, press Execute again to re-run it.

Limitations

• At most 1000 rows will be returned per query (though any number of rows may be examined)
• DISTINCT, HAVING, subqueries, joins, or unions are unsupported
• ANY, ALL, and EXISTS clauses are unsupported
• SELECT * cannot be combined with GROUP BY
• You cannot GROUP BY a function unless the same expression is in the SELECT clause.
• You cannot run more than 2 RQL queries in parallel per account
• Querying more than 200K occurrences typically does not work. It may be useful to narrow your query by timestamp or item.counter to stay under the 200K threshold. For example:
• Filter by day: WHERE unix_timestamp() - timestamp BETWEEN 60 * 60 * 24 * 0 and 60 * 60 * 24 * 1
• Filter by hour: WHERE unix_timestamp() - timestamp BETWEEN 60 * 60 * 0 and 60 * 60 * 1
• Filter by item.counter: WHERE item.counter = 800

Schema

item_occurrence

item_occurrence is a table where each row contains data for a single occurrence and the item it is associated with. Column names starting with "item." reference the item, and all other column names reference the occurrence. Column names that do not exist in a particular occurrence evaluate to NULL.

The following columns exist for every row in item_occurrence:

Many virtual columns will also exist, depending on which Rollbar SDK you use and what custom data you send. Simply use the JSON path to the field you want to query. To see the JSON structure of one of your occurrences, click the "Raw JSON" button on an Occurrence page. The structure will follow the Rollbar API Item Schema.

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When querying a virtual column, make sure to wrap it in backticks, e.g.

`request.headers.User-Agent`="python-requests/2.9.1"  

Here are some common column names, all of which refer to data for the occurrence:

deploy

deploy is a table where each row represents a single deploy. It contains the following columns:

Constants

Framework IDs

The item.framework property is an integer value that maps as follows:

    'unknown': 0,
    'rails': 1,
    'django': 2,
    'pyramid': 3,
    'node-js': 4,
    'pylons': 5,
    'php': 6,
    'browser-js': 7,
    'rollbar-system': 8,  # system messages, like "over rate limit"
    'android': 9,
    'ios': 10,
    'mailgun': 11,
    'logentries': 12,
    'python': 13,
    'ruby': 14,
    'sidekiq': 15,
    'flask': 16,
    'celery': 17,
    'rq': 18,
    'java': 19,
    'dotnet': 20,
    'go': 21,
    'react-native': 22,
    'macos': 23,
    'apex': 24,
    'spring': 25,
    'bottle': 26,
    'twisted': 27,
    'asgi': 28,
    'starlette': 29,
    'fastapi': 30,
    'karafka': 31,
    'flutter': 32,

Platform IDs

The item.platform property is an integer value which maps as follows:

    'unknown': 0,
    'browser': 1,
    'flash': 2,
    'android': 3,
    'ios': 4,
    'heroku': 5,
    'google-app-engine': 6,
    'client': 7,