Prometheus Exposition — Empty but Valid Scrape (prom)
A scrape body with metadata but no samples, which is what a freshly started process returns before it has recorded anything. Valid, and routinely mistaken for a failed scrape by code that treats an empty result as an error.
# A valid scrape that exposes no samples at all.
# HELP shop_orders_total Orders accepted since process start.
# TYPE shop_orders_total counter
# The process has served no orders yet, so the family has no series.
Specifications
- Series
- 0
- Families
- 1
- Comment Lines
- 4
- Valid
- true
- Cause
- no observations recorded yet
Testing contract
Expected to pass- Scenario
- Scrape the endpoint body and record the result.
- Expected result
- The scrape succeeds with zero samples and up stays 1; treating an empty body as a scrape failure is the bug this fixture catches.
What is a .prom file?
A .prom file holds metrics in the Prometheus text exposition format, the same body a `/metrics` endpoint returns. Each metric family is introduced by `# HELP` and `# TYPE` comments and followed by one sample per line: a metric name, an optional brace-delimited label set, a value, and an optional millisecond timestamp. Counters, gauges, histograms (with `_bucket`, `_sum`, `_count` series and a `+Inf` bucket), and summaries with quantile labels all use this one grammar.
How to use this file
Use an example .prom file to test exposition-format parsers, scrapers, and the node_exporter textfile collector — checking label escaping, histogram bucket ordering and cumulative counts, and the handling of `NaN` and `+Inf` values.
How to use this file for testing
“Prometheus Exposition — Empty but Valid Scrape (prom)” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Observability, Error handling, Config parsing. Structured and plain-text telemetry with known timestamps, levels, request identifiers, and error states for testing log ingestion, correlation, dashboards, and alert pipelines.
Documented properties for this file: PROM · 213 bytes. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Telemetry fixtures use fixed trace IDs, span IDs, and timestamps so ingestion is reproducible run to run. Point your collector, parser, or query layer at the file and assert the documented span tree, metric families, or severity mix; service and host names are invented.
Related files
- promOpenMetrics — Missing # EOF Marker, Intentionally Invalid (prom)A document that parses perfectly as Prometheus text and is invalid as OpenMetrics, because the mandatory # EOF terminator is missing. That marker is the format's only defence against a truncated response being accepted as complete — which is the exact failure this file reproduces.
- promPrometheus Exposition — Broken Histograms, Intentionally Invalid (prom)Two histogram families that are syntactically fine and semantically wrong: one has non-monotonic buckets and no +Inf bucket, the other reports a _count larger than its +Inf bucket. Intentionally invalid, because histogram_quantile over either produces a confidently wrong number rather than an error.
- promPrometheus Exposition — Duplicate Series, Intentionally Invalid (prom)One label set exposed twice, a second pair that is only a duplicate once labels are sorted, and a repeated HELP line. Intentionally invalid: a scrape must fail rather than let last-write-wins decide which of two values for the same series survives.
- jsonPrometheus HTTP API — Error Envelope with a PromQL Parse Error (json)The error envelope a Prometheus API returns for a malformed PromQL query — status, errorType, a message with a line and column position, and an empty but present data object. Clients that only check for a data key render this as a successful empty result.
- log.NET Exception with an Inner Exception Chain (log)A .NET exception whose inner exception is introduced by the ---> marker and closed by End of inner exception stack trace, wrapped in pipe-delimited log lines. Error groupers that key on the outermost message alone merge two genuinely different faults here.
- yamlAlertmanager Config — Routing Tree, Inhibition and Mute Windows (yaml)An Alertmanager configuration with the routing behaviour that is hard to reason about without a fixture: a continue: true branch so a critical alert reaches two receivers, an inhibition rule suppressing warnings under a matching critical, and a weekend mute window.
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