[Phase 2] Usage of "Generation URL" should be made clear by UI

[elasticmachine]

Original comment by @Rasroh:

Build: 5.0.0-rc1-795f98e2
Installed x-plugins on both ES and Kibana .
I copied the Reporting URL to the clipboard and when I paste the same URL in another browser am hitting {"statusCode":404,"error":"Not Found"}
Encountered this issue on Dashboard , Discover tabs.

@lee.dr: too saw the same issue on his machine.

Edit by @epixa:
The UI should make it clear how to use the "Generation" URL by explaining it must be used in a POST request with proper authentication and a kbn-xsrf: reporting header. Alternatively, we can give a brief overview that this is to be used for automation and link to the docs, but we must do something. The current implementation does not at all add any clarity around that the purpose is, and if you copy it into your browser, you just get an error.

Also, we should update GET requests to that route to return a 405 Method Not Allowed error with a useful error message instead of the current 404 behavior. The error message should suggest that the user use POST instead.

[elasticmachine]

Original comment by @LeeDr:

Here's a kibana log line from when I tried it which shows the 404 response. Security in x-pack is enabled so when I paste the "Generation URL" into another tab I get the login screen, but then the 404.

EMAIL REDACTED (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/53.0.2785.143 Safari/537.36","accept":"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8","accept-encoding":"gzip, deflate, sdch","accept-language":"en-US,en;q=0.8,fr-FR;q=0.6,fr;q=0.4,de-DE;q=0.2,de;q=0.2"},"remoteAddress":"10.0.2.2","userAgent":"10.0.2.2"},"res":{"statusCode":404,"responseTime":31,"contentLength":9},"message":"GET /api/reporting/generate/dashboard/Query-1-dashboard?_g=()&_a=(filters%3A!()%2Coptions%3A(darkTheme%3A!f)%2Cpanels%3A!((col%3A1%2Ccolumns%3A!(_source)%2Cid%3AQuery-%23-1%2CpanelIndex%3A1%2Crow%3A1%2Csize_x%3A11%2Csize_y%3A4%2Csort%3A!('%40timestamp'%2Cdesc)%2Ctype%3Asearch))%2Cquery%3A(query_string%3A(analyze_wildcard%3A!t%2Cquery%3A'*'))%2Ctitle%3A'Query%201%20dashboard'%2CuiState%3A())&sync= 404 31ms - 9.0B"}

[elasticmachine]

Original comment by @epixa:

I updated the title/description of this issue to offer proposed solutions to this ambiguity.

[elasticmachine]

Original comment by @cjcenizal:

I was about to create an issue around this. Just to add my own experience, it's really confusing when you visit the URL in the browser and just get this:

!LINK REDACTED

This message could be made much clearer by explaining what happened and giving suggestions on what to do next:

"Looks like you're trying to access a report generation URL through your browser. This URL can only be used with a POST request, not a GET request, and is meant to be used in an automated system, and not visited in the browser. If you'd like to generate a report manually, please click the "Generate Printable PDF" button in the Kibana UI. For more information on the report generation URL, please see the documentation."

We could also put a link the Reporting UI that provides more context on how to use this URL.

Users have been confused by this too: https://discuss.elastic.co/t/kibana-report-api-405-error/67771

[stacey-gammon]

I agree this is pretty confusing. Not sure if there are any new designs for this reporting pane? cc @elastic/kibana-design. If not, maybe @gchaps could help us come up with some better text (lmk if you want to sync to go over the issue).

[cchaos]

There are no new designs for reporting yet, as far as I know.

[cchaos]

@stacey-gammon I actually did find some old designs for this, that I still think are viable today (I updated it slightly). The idea is that is would be housed in the Dashboard's overall "Options" context menu when all those top menu items get combined. The language could still be tweaked with @gchaps' help.

I think the main things this shows are:

1. Call it a "POST" url outright and mention it's for use outside of Kibana (as an API) or with watcher.
2. Remove the input that shows the url since it can't be manipulated anyway, it makes no sense to show them an almost nonsensical url and just give them a way to get it to their clipboard.

[timroes]

@joelgriffith @tsullivan I think the only thing missing from that dialog right now, is that the user still need to set the kbn-xsrf header (if that's still true for reporting?). Do you think we could get this still in there (maybe behind an additional help tooltip?)

[tsullivan]

Yes, it is still applicable to reporting and I agree it should be made clear. A tooltip might not be the best approach though. I'd be ideal if there's something that could be copy/pasted into code. Maybe a collapsible container?

Maybe have a curl usage example that can be copy/pasted?

curl -k -XPOST -H "kbn-xsrf: reporting" http://localhost:5601/

I don't want to get too hung up on the details of what it should look like. The way it looks currently has a vague look to it, unless you know what Watcher is. Hopefully by putting in the right amount of additional needed detail, we can make it not vague.

[antoniocascais]

Hi all.

I'm also trying to use the "Copy POST Url" feature, but also having lots of problems with it.

In the beginning was getting a 405 and only then realized it was a POST request, not a GET.
Now I'm getting a 408 error code, no idea why (tried to add the reporting header, no success).

Can you had an example or something to the feature? It is really not intuitive :(

[brow17]

Is there any update on this issue? Does anyone have a working example of a curl command using the "Copy POST URL" output?

[tsullivan]

Working example:

 curl -u [username:password] -H 'kbn-version: 8.0.0' -XPOST [copied URL]

I am not aware that the Kibana server can send a 408 code response. Is the address to Kibana an address to a proxy?

[antoniocascais]

Thank you @tsullivan , that works ! :)

So I guess the kbn-version header was missing in my attempt... Solved now

[tsullivan]

@antoniocascais Glad to hear that it worked! Without the kbn-version header supplied, Kibana will reply with a 400 error code. Unfortunately, that doesn't help explain where your 408 came from.

[antoniocascais]

I don't remember which request I executed to get the 408 and can't reproduce it now. Maybe I did something really weird and that was the reason 🤔

[tsullivan]

I have no reason to question you, but I would make sense if it was actually a 400 instead of a 408

[tsullivan]

There are a few related issues to this:

• Missing documentation: Reporting generation URL now requires kbn-version header to be set #17941
• Update "Automatic Report Generation" docs with CSV report info #37706

[tsullivan]

@joelgriffith @tsullivan I think the only thing missing from that dialog right now, is that the user still need to set the kbn-xsrf header (if that's still true for reporting?). Do you think we could get this still in there (maybe behind an additional help tooltip?)

This seems pretty technical to include in a tooltip. I'm working on making it more clear in the documentation with:

Would it make sense to link to the docs from the UI? I can't think of other examples in Kibana where we do that.

[LeeDr]

@tsullivan we do include links to docs in a few places.

[LeeDr]

and another;

[tsullivan]

Thanks @LeeDr I'll take a look at those to see how the links get connected to the correct docs version

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-stack-services

[tsullivan]

@antoniocascais

I don't remember which request I executed to get the 408 and can't reproduce it now. Maybe I did something really weird and that was the reason 🤔

I've now heard that this has come up in internal testing, so it wasn't something that you did.

Filed #41594

[antoniocascais]

Then I'm not going crazy!
Thank you for letting me know @tsullivan 👍

[tsullivan]

Proposal text for adding a link to the documentation:

Alternatively, use this POST URL to call generation of reports from outside of Kibana. See the Reporting documentation for info about automating report generation.

[bmcconaghy]

Makes sense to me @tsullivan

[gchaps]

@tsullivan The text is fine as is, but I wonder if we might tighten it a bit. Here are some options.

Alternatively, use this POST URL to generate reports outside Kibana. Learn about automatic report generation.

Alternatively, use this POST URL to generate reports outside Kibana. See Reporting for how to automate report generation.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-reporting-services (Team:Reporting Services)

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-app-services (Team:AppServices)

[ppisljar]

Thank you for contributing to this issue, however, we are closing this issue due to inactivity as part of a backlog grooming effort. If you believe this feature/bug should still be considered, please reopen with a comment.