'EphemeralMetrics' object has no attribute 'set_default_dimensions'

[tibbe]

Expected Behaviour

log_metrics() with default_dimensions should also work for EphemeralMetrics.

Current Behaviour

Since EphemeralMetrics has no set_default_dimensions method it fails with the error in the issue title.

Code snippet

@my_metrics.log_metrics(
    default_dimensions={'Stage': 'prod'}
):
def handler(event, context):
   pass:

Possible Solution

EphemeralMetrics should have most of the methods that Metrics has (in particular those related to default dimensions), as these method are orthogonal to the non-singletoness of EphemeralMetrics.

Steps to Reproduce

Run a Lambda with the code snippet above.

Powertools for AWS Lambda (Python) version

latest

AWS Lambda function runtime

3.10

Packaging format used

PyPi

Debugging logs

No response

[heitorlessa]

hey @tibbe great to hear from you again - we intentionally did that .

If you have an use case to persist dimensions across invocations within ephemeral metrics, happy to convert this to a feature request -- if you have the bandwidth to make a PR we can prioritize it for the next release :)

[heitorlessa]

Asked on Discord to bring more visibility: https://discord.com/channels/1006478942305263677/1006527338621710376/1127918302686097438

In hindsight, I'm starting to think this makes sense. We'd need to signal in the docs that EphemeralMetrics instances will not share a default dimension since it's completely isolated.

I'll wait for a signal from you or another customer before proceeding.

Thanks!

[heitorlessa]

Confirmed use case on Discord, will get this ready for the next release.

---

from OP

I have a Lambda that consumes a DynamoDB stream and receives a batch of items from DynamoDB in each invocation. I have three metrics that have a dimension that is the same across the batch (the "Stage" e.g. "prod" or "development") and a dimension that varies across the batch (the "ItemType" e.g. "user" or "chat"). The former dimension would be convenient to set as a default dimension. I could of course just set it directly after the invocation starts, which is what I did as a workaround.

The dimension that varies across the batch is a bit trickier, as I can't re-set a dimension (all metrics would simply get the value of the last call to set_dimension). I ended up using a dict of EphemeralMetrics to handle this.

At the end of the day I'm just trying to use Lambda metrics in the way that's most efficient. The ideal API is actually just to emit the dimensions with the metric (i.e. just as a SingleMetric or really just a call to a hypothetical emit_metric(*dimensions, name, unit)). What we're doing here is in my mind just a workaround for what the Lambda logging schema supports efficiently.