K6_STATSD_NAMESPACE env var is broken for string.empty

[kkriegkxs]

Brief summary

env var K6_STATSD_NAMESPACE = "" does not override - treated as NULL?

k6 version

37

OS

win2019

Docker version and image (if applicable)

No response

Steps to reproduce the problem

set "K6_STATSD_NAMESPACE=" && k6 --out statsd run xxxx.js

Expected behaviour

tag prefix = ""

Actual behaviour

tag prefix = "k6_"

[mstoykov]

Hi @kkriegkxs, thank you for reporting this 🙇

While at first glance it seemed like the fix was going to be to just fix this line

k6/output/statsd/output.go

Lines 130 to 132 in 582a2a7

	if namespace := o.config.Namespace.String; namespace != "" {
	o.client.Namespace = namespace
	}

It turns out that (unfortunately for us in this case) null.String#UnmarshalText specifically treats empty strings as if they aren't set.

This unfortunately means that we will need to fork it, hack around it or wait for #883 and potentially moving to croconf to fix this.

Am I correct in assuming this is more of an inconvenience and a surprise for you than actually a dealbreaker or something that you will need to work around?

[kkriegkxs]

hi @mstoykov! THX for a quick response

A quick hack of a reserved value "blank" or something to that tune. I think this hack would be an acceptable solution for more than one config esp if implemented globally.
#883 has been around for a loooooong time and is unlikely to be resolved any time soon (I guess).

It does force me into using something I wasn't planning but it's pretty static so it is not a deal breaker or I would have forked it :)

[LeonAdato]

Per @olegbespalov and @javaducky, this issue should probably be part of the StatsD project. Feel free to transfer it here:

https://github.com/LeonAdato/xk6-output-statsd

[olegbespalov]

Closing in favor of LeonAdato/xk6-output-statsd#26