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Grafana Dash: A Dashboard Manager

A simple utility for managing Jsonnet dashboards - uses the Grafana REST API.

It is designed to work with monitoring mixins. It expects dashboards to be exposed by a libsonnet file as a grafanaDashboards object.

Status: Alpha. This is a proof of concept. It will have many holes. PRs welcome.

Building

Makefile needs sorting out. Build with go build cmd/g/g.go.

Authentication and Configuration

This tool interacts with Grafana via its REST API. For this, you will need to establish authentication credentials. These are provided to dash via environment variables.

You can either provide a GRAFANA_URL, which can include authentication details, or you scan specify separately:

  • GRAFANA_PROTOCOL: Defaults to https. You can set this to http if you Grafana instance does not use SSL.
  • GRAFANA_USER: Either basic auth username, or apikey if using an API token.
  • GRAFANA_TOKEN: Either an API token, or a password for Basic auth. To retrieve a token in Grafana, select the configuration option on the left (the cog), then 'API Keys'. From there you should be able add a new key, with 'Editor' permissions.
  • GRAFANA_HOST: The hostname for your Grafana installation.
  • GRAFANA_PATH: If the Grafana instance is not hosted at the root of the domain, you can add specify a path such as grafana. Do not specify the initial slash.

Basic Commands

dash get

Retrieves a dashboard from Grafana, via its UID:

$ dash get my-uid

dash show

Shows the mixin rendered as json.

$ dash show some-mixin.libsonnet

dash diff

Compares each dashboard rendered by the mixin with the dashboard in Grafana

$ dash diff some-mixin.libsonnet

dash apply

Uploads each dashboard rendered by the mixin to Grafana

$ dash apply some-mixin.libsonnet

Example

Create a file, called mydash.libsonnet, that contains this:

{
  grafanaDashboards+:: {
     "my-dash.json": {
        "uid": "prod-overview",
        "title": "Production Overview",
        "tags": [ "templated" ],
        "timezone": "browser",
        "schemaVersion": 16,
     },
  },
}

Note that this dashboard has a UID. UIDs are required for dash to function correctly.

This file follows the standard Monitoring Mixin pattern as defined within the prometheus-ksonnet library.

Now, we can see this rendered as a JSON dashboard with:

$ dash show mydash.libsonnet

Next, we need to interact with Grafana. You will need to export two environment variables: GRAFANA_TOKEN, an API token created within Grafana itself, and GRAFANA_HOST, the hostname for your Grafana installation. If the Grafana instance is not hosted at the root of the domain, you can add specify a hostname such as admin.example.com/grafana. If your Grafana does not use SSL, you can set GRAFANA_PROTOCOL to http.

Now, let's push our dashboard to Grafana:

$ dash apply mydash.libsonnet

At this point, you should find your dashboard has been uploaded and will be visible within the Grafana UI.

As a next step, we shall make a change to our dashboard. In your mydash.libsonnet, change the title to Production Overview mk2. Your jsonnet will now look like this:

{
  grafanaDashboards+:: {
    "my-dash.json": {
        "uid": "prod-overview",
        "title": "Production Overview mk2",
        "tags": [ "templated" ],
        "timezone": "browser",
        "schemaVersion": 16,
    },
  },
}

Then:

$ dash diff mydash.libsonnet

will show us the single change we have made to our dashboard.

And next:

$ dash apply mydash.libsonnet

will push our change up to Grafana. Check your Grafana dashboard list - you should see your dashboard show with its new name.

You can retrieve a dashboard from Grafana via its UID:

$ dash get prod-overview