Skip to main content

Counter

Every Metric can be visualized as a counter. This is the simplest way to query a Metric, returning a single value summarizing the Metric over the requested time range. For example, a counter could represent

  • The sum of sales for the quarter,
  • A count of signups for the week, or
  • Error occurrences in the last hour.

Any time a single number will do, consider using a counter. For more complex visualizations that return multiple values, check out Time Series and Leaderboard.

Usage​

When building customer-facing analytics, you could place a counter inline next to some text, as an icon at the start of a <button>, or you could make it extra-large in a dashboard, to grab the customer's attention:

189

An example of an extra-large counter you might present in a dashboard.

Arguments​

You will pass a CounterInput when querying the counter. The most important arguments are

  1. The timeRange to query over, and
  2. The filters to use.

Read more about CounterInput.

Returns​

The query returns a single value inside a CounterResponse. The value is a number wrapped in a string. Using a string ensures we can support values greater than 32-bits in the GraphQL API.

Read more about CounterResponse.

Example​

Suppose we have a Data Pool syncing from a table of restaurant sales data. The data might look like the following:

timestamp
restaurant_name
taco_name
taco_total_price
taco_unit_price
quantity

Note: this data has essentially the same format as the TacoSoft data we used in our Quickstart.

We can first create a Sum Metric named "Revenue" which sums up the price column. By including restaurant_name and taco_name as Dimensions, we can answer questions with our Metric. Follow along for worked examples.

1. How much revenue did a particular restaurant generate?​

In this example, we seek to find out the total revenue generated by a specific restaurant over the last year. This is accomplished by querying our Revenue Metric and applying filters for the restaurant_name dimension. We pass in an input variable containing our specific conditions: a timeRange specifying the last year and a filter set to equal "La Taqueria". The query returns the total revenue wrapped in a string.

query CounterExample1($input: CounterInput!) {
  counter(input: $input) {
    value
  }
}

You can replicate this query on GraphQL Explorer by logging in here.

You can learn more about how to structure a Counter query here.

2. How much revenue did a particular taco generate?​

Building on the previous example, we can also determine the revenue generated by a specific taco. While the query structure remains the same, we'll modify the filter condition to target the taco_name Dimension instead of the restaurant_name Dimension.

query CounterExample2($input: CounterInput!) {
  counter(input: $input) {
    value
  }
}

Replicate this query in the GraphQL Explorer. More on Counter queries here.