Is DataDog tag value converted to lower case with underscores?

Question

I push a custom tag to DataDog with key of execute_error and value of "testing DATADOG mApPeR OK"

However, when I check on the DataDog, it looks like the tag is mapped into "execute_error:testing_datadog_mapper_ok".

I expect a "execute_error:testing DATADOG mApPeR OK".

Is this a feature by DataDog?

I have read the docs, but can't find relevant info about this.

One thing that I have found is that DataDog maps the tag key as written in Getting Started with Tags (I am still unsure whether they do the same for the tag value).

Thank you.

PS. Sorry I can't attach screenshot due to reputation

Answer 1

You are correct that datadog will convert tags to lower case, in the doc you linked there is a note:

Tags are converted to lowercase. Therefore, CamelCase tags are not recommended. Authentication (crawler) based integrations convert camel case tags to underscores, for example TestTag –> test_tag

https://docs.datadoghq.com/getting_started/tagging/

The notes about crawler based integrations is mostly referring to Cloudwatch metrics from AWS with tend to like camelcase, so there's some special logic to convert those tags in datadog.

There is also a note about which characters are valid for making tags:

Tags must start with a letter and after that may contain the characters listed below:

• Alphanumerics
• Underscores
• Minuses
• Colons
• Periods
• Slashes
• Other special characters are converted to underscores.

Spaces are not in that list and are considered special characters that get converted to _.

The docs are saying "tags" in both these notes, not just the key, but the full key:value pair.