search_dashboards method works incorrectly if to use a list for the tag option

[vladchel]

Try to search dashboards by several tags. E.g. TAG1 and TAG2 are assigned to some dashboard. In this case
grafana.search.search_dashboards(tag=['TAG1', 'TAG2'])
should find this dashboard. Really nothing will be found.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Create a dashboard with TAG1 and TAG2 tags
2. Run grafana.search.search_dashboards(tag=['TAG1', 'TAG2'])
3. See an empty search result

Expected behavior
The dashboard with these tags is found.

Versions

• Grafana: 12.0.2
• grafana-client: 5.0.1
• Authentication: Token

Additional context
This happens because all list parameters are joined by the comma inside format_param_value method. If to remove this call inside search_dashboards or replace

def format_param_value(maybe_list):
    if isinstance(maybe_list, list):
        return ",".join([str(x) for x in maybe_list])
    else:
        return maybe_list

to

def format_param_value(maybe_list):
    return maybe_list

all works fine. This problem is related to all list options of search_dashboards (e.g. folder_uids).

[amotl]

Hi @vladchel,

thanks a stack for reporting this. Do you think this worked well with previous versions of Grafana? In any case, could you submit a patch that fixes this flaw for you?

With kind regards,
Andreas.

[vladchel]

The oldest Grafana version which was checked is 11.3.0. It produces URL with tag=TAG1&tag=TAG2 if to search in UI by 2 tags. Nothing found if to use the comma for joining: tag=TAG,TAG2

search.patch - all format_param_value calls were removed.

[amotl]

Hi @vladchel. Thanks a stack for attaching a patch ¹. I think we'd need to validate this also against previous versions of Grafana, possibly down to version 6/7 before applying this patch. We have users that still use such outdated versions.

I think it will be easy by using Docker or Podman for spinning up corresponding Grafana versions.

Footnotes

1. Can you also submit the patch as pull request? ↩