When creating triggers in Honeycomb, you may encounter a situation where you want to set up a trigger for an attribute that doesn't yet exist in your dataset. This article explains why this happens and provides workarounds to address the issue.

Why can't I add a condition for a non-existent attribute?

Honeycomb requires an attribute to exist in the dataset before it can be used in queries or triggers. This means you can't directly create a trigger for an attribute like 'error' if that attribute hasn't appeared in your data at least once.

Workarounds

There are two main ways to work around this limitation:

1. Send a dummy event

You can send a dummy event via the Honeycomb API to create the attribute in your dataset. Here's an example using curl:

curl -X POST \
  -H "X-Honeycomb-Team: YOUR_API_KEY_HERE" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "error": true
  }' \
  https://api.honeycomb.io/1/events/YOUR_DATASET_NAME

Replace YOUR_API_KEY_HERE with your actual Honeycomb API key and YOUR_DATASET_NAME with the name of your dataset.

2. Define the column using the Columns API

You can use Honeycomb's Columns API to define the attribute directly. For more information on how to use this API, refer to the Honeycomb API documentation.

Future improvements

Honeycomb is aware that this is a frequently requested feature and is considering ways to improve this experience in the future. In the meantime, use one of the workarounds above to create triggers for attributes that don't yet exist in your dataset.