Units larger than `h` in `GrafanaAlertRuleGroup#.spec.rules[*].for` are rejected on apply

[Baarsgaard]

Describe the bug
When exporting Alerts and AlertGroups from Grafana in order to populate a GrafanaAlertRuleGroup CR, we see that when specific values are picked for pending period( .spec.rules[*].for) like 24h, Grafana will export it as 1d.
At the time of writing, years, weeks, and days are not supported in the .spec.rules[*].for field.

Version
v5.19.4

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Open a Grafana v11.5.3 or later
2. Create or modify an alert rule
3. Set the pending period to 24h
4. Save and Export the alert, notice it should have converted the pending period to 1d
5. Apply the rule as a CRD

6.  # grafanaalertrulegroups.grafana.integreatly.org "grafana-health" was not valid:
    # * spec.rules[0].for: Invalid value: "1d": spec.rules[0].for in body should match '^([0-9]+(\.[0-9]+)?(ns|us|µs|ms|s|m|h))+$'
   

Expected behavior
Following the above steps, the CRD should be succesfully applied and synchronized with matching instances.

Suspect component/Location where the bug might be occurring

grafana-operator/api/v1beta1/grafanaalertrulegroup_types.go

Line 52 in 44b51c8

// +kubebuilder:validation:Pattern="^([0-9]+(\\.[0-9]+)?(ns|us|µs|ms|s|m|h))+$"

Runtime (please complete the following information):

• OS: Linux
• Grafana Operator Version: v5.19.4
• Environment: Kubernetes 1.31
• Deployment type: Helm
• Other: N/A

Additional context
It might be worth it to remove ns, us, µs, ms as they do not make much sense as alert delays and add d and w. and omit y as that does not make much sense either.

[vignesh-codes]

@Baarsgaard I'd like to contribute here.

Please assign to me

So we need to update the crds to accept the new units "d" and "w" and update the codes to handle them right?
Are we removing ns, us, µs, ms ?

[Baarsgaard]

Indeed!
Adding a test using the d and w values is a bit important as the default time.Duration struct in Go cannot parse the units.
Hence there needs to be custom parsing of it to derive the number of seconds that is sent to Grafana:

grafana-operator/controllers/alertrulegroup_controller.go

Line 215 in 1bb15b5

Interval: int64(cr.Spec.Interval.Seconds()),

Grafana itself might have some code we can use for handling this?

[vignesh-codes]

@Baarsgaard I was just updating the crds and making dev setup. From what i see, we dont handle "d" and "w" in current repo code.

I need help in the following

we ok introducing this grafana package to handle times?
https://github.com/grafana/grafana-plugin-sdk-go/tree/main/backend/gtime

Or I could introduce an extended duration parsing helpers to handle them.

Letme know

[theSuess]

@vignesh-codes is the grafana-plugin-sdk-go the only place you found this logic? I'd expect it to be part of grafana/grafana as well but I haven't checked myself yet.

If it's in grafana/grafana as well, I'd prefer that version. Otherwise, we're good with importing the package

[vignesh-codes]

@theSuess They also seem to be using gtime package

https://github.com/grafana/grafana/blob/9573cd339562075ea7716b36eeeee2a0eb4fcde5/pkg/setting/setting.go#L1702

draft pr - #2233