Correct Consul service tagging format

Consul
1

I dynamically generate tags for consul services and I’ve just realised I may not be using service tags correctly, I’ve been reading through the documentation and can’t find a clear standard or practice, so I believe it’s down to preference but thought it worth asking

if I use a common example that’s documented many times over of using node_exporter to present a monitoring end point, I’ve had this service definition

 node-exporter:
  address: 1.2.3.4
  checks:
   - http: http://localhost:9100/metrics
    interval: 10s
  port: 9100
  tags:
   - "job:node-exporter"
   - "function:telemetry"
   - "source:metrics"
   - "hardware:virtual"
   - "arch:x86_64"
   - "osname:RedHat"
   - "osversion:9.6"
  meta:
   SLA: 1

which outputs a service file like this

{"service":{"address":"1.2.3.4","checks":[{"http":"http://localhost:9100/metrics","interval":"10s"}],"enable_tag_override":false,"id":"node-exporter","meta":{"SLA":"1"},"name":"node-exporter","port":9100,"tags":["job:node-exporter","function:telemetry","source:metrics","hardware:virtual","arch:x86_64","osname:RedHat","osversion:9.6"]}}

I don’t fully know if there should be a space between the key and value in the tags

eg:

"arch:x86_64"

or

"arch: x86_64"

I’m also now unclear on how to search based on tags from the command line, in older versions I could do

consul catalog service -tag=$something

I’m not sure how to actually do that now in the current version ?

I’d appreciate clarification or pointing at the documentation that shows how to set tags ‘properly’

thanks

2

re-reading the docs and from a helpful link someone else sent me, I’ve mixed meta and tags.