Grafana Has a Free HTTP API That Lets You Build Dashboards Programmatically

#grafana #monitoring #devops #observability

Grafana is the open-source observability platform. Its HTTP API lets you create dashboards, alerts, and data sources entirely through code.

Dashboard API: Create Dashboards via Code

const dashboard = {
  dashboard: {
    title: "Scraping Metrics",
    tags: ["scraping", "monitoring"],
    panels: [
      {
        id: 1,
        type: "timeseries",
        title: "Scrapes per Hour",
        gridPos: { h: 8, w: 12, x: 0, y: 0 },
        targets: [{
          expr: 'rate(scrapes_total[1h])',
          legendFormat: '{{source}}',
        }],
      },
      {
        id: 2,
        type: "stat",
        title: "Total Products Scraped",
        gridPos: { h: 4, w: 6, x: 12, y: 0 },
        targets: [{ expr: 'scrapes_total' }],
        options: { colorMode: "value", graphMode: "area" },
      },
      {
        id: 3,
        type: "table",
        title: "Recent Errors",
        gridPos: { h: 8, w: 12, x: 12, y: 4 },
        targets: [{
          expr: 'scrape_errors_total',
          format: 'table',
        }],
      },
    ],
  },
  overwrite: true,
};

const response = await fetch("http://localhost:3000/api/dashboards/db", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    Authorization: `Bearer ${GRAFANA_API_KEY}`,
  },
  body: JSON.stringify(dashboard),
});

Alert Rules API

const alertRule = {
  folderUID: "scraping-alerts",
  ruleGroup: "scraping",
  rules: [{
    grafana_alert: {
      title: "High Error Rate",
      condition: "C",
      data: [
        { refId: "A", model: { expr: 'rate(scrape_errors_total[5m])' } },
        { refId: "B", model: { type: "reduce", reducer: "last" } },
        { refId: "C", model: { type: "threshold", conditions: [{ evaluator: { type: "gt", params: [0.1] } }] } },
      ],
      no_data_state: "OK",
      exec_err_state: "Error",
    },
    for: "5m",
    annotations: { summary: "Scraping error rate above 10%" },
    labels: { severity: "warning" },
  }],
};

await fetch("http://localhost:3000/api/v1/provisioning/alert-rules", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json", Authorization: `Bearer ${GRAFANA_API_KEY}` },
  body: JSON.stringify(alertRule),
});

Data Source API

// Add Prometheus data source
await fetch("http://localhost:3000/api/datasources", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json", Authorization: `Bearer ${GRAFANA_API_KEY}` },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    name: "Prometheus",
    type: "prometheus",
    url: "http://prometheus:9090",
    access: "proxy",
    isDefault: true,
  }),
});

Query API: Run Queries Programmatically

const queryResult = await fetch("http://localhost:3000/api/ds/query", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json", Authorization: `Bearer ${GRAFANA_API_KEY}` },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    queries: [{
      refId: "A",
      datasource: { type: "prometheus" },
      expr: 'scrapes_total{source="amazon"}',
      range: true,
      intervalMs: 60000,
      maxDataPoints: 1000,
    }],
    from: "now-24h",
    to: "now",
  }),
}).then(r => r.json());