PxL Scripts
PxL (Pixie Language) is Pixie’s query language for exploring telemetry data. It is based on Python and the Pandas DataFrame API.
Built-in Scripts
Pixie comes with many pre-built scripts accessible from the Live UI:
Cluster Overview
| Script | Description |
|——–|————-|
| px/cluster | Service graph with HTTP traffic, latency, error, and throughput per service |
| px/namespace | Pods and services in a namespace with service map |
| px/namespaces | All namespaces with pod/service counts and resource consumption |
Service Performance
| Script | Description |
|——–|————-|
| px/service | Latency, error, and throughput over time for a service |
| px/services | LET (Latency, Error, Throughput) for all services in a namespace |
| px/service_stats | LET over time with traffic summary |
| px/service_edge_stats | Statistics about traffic between two services |
| pxbeta/service_endpoints | Performance per logical endpoint (with URL wildcards) |
Request Tracing
| Script | Description |
|——–|————-|
| px/http_data | Recent HTTP/2 requests in the cluster |
| px/http_data_filtered | HTTP requests filtered by service, pod, path, status code |
| px/dns_data | Recent DNS requests with request/response bodies |
Database Monitoring
| Script | Description |
|——–|————-|
| px/mysql_data | Recent MySQL requests with full bodies |
| px/mysql_stats | MySQL latency, error, and throughput by pod |
| px/sql_queries | Latency per normalized SQL query |
| px/pgsql_data / px/pgsql_stats | PostgreSQL monitoring |
| px/redis_data / px/redis_stats | Redis monitoring |
| px/cql_data / px/cql_stats | Cassandra monitoring |
Network Monitoring
| Script | Description |
|——–|————-|
| px/net_flow_graph | Network flow graph between pods |
| px/dns_flow_graph | DNS request flow graph |
| bpftrace/tcp_drops | TCP drops between pod pairs |
| bpftrace/tcp_retransmits | TCP retransmission counts |
Infrastructure
| Script | Description |
|——–|————-|
| px/nodes | Resource usage (CPU, memory, network) for all nodes |
| px/node | Detailed stats for a single node |
| px/pod | Pod overview with HTTP metrics, resources, and CPU flamegraph |
| px/pods | Overview of all pods in a namespace |
| px/perf_flamegraph | Stack trace samples for application profiling |
| px/jvm_stats | JVM stats for Java processes |
Script Editor
The Pixie Live UI includes a built-in script editor (Ctrl+E) for modifying and creating PxL scripts.
Example: Filtering HTTP errors
import px
# Get HTTP events
df = px.DataFrame('http_events', start_time='-5m')
# Access the service name
df.service = df.ctx['service']
# Filter to only catalogue service
df = df[df.service == 'px-sock-shop/catalogue']
# Filter to errors greater or equal to 400
df = df[df.resp_status >= 400]
px.display(df)
Example: MySQL error analysis
import px
df = px.DataFrame('mysql_events', start_time='-5m')
# Filter to error responses
df = df[df.resp_status == 3]
px.display(df)
Scratch Pad
The Scratch Pad allows running custom PxL scripts without modifying built-in ones. Access it from the Live UI navigation.
A script consists of two parts:
- PxL Script — the data query logic (Python-like)
- Vis Spec — the visualization specification (JSON)