grafyaml

At a glance

• Free software: Apache license
• Documentation: http://docs.openstack.org/infra/grafyaml/
• Source: http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack-infra/grafyaml
• Bugs: https://storyboard.openstack.org/#!/project/818

Overview

grafyaml takes descriptions of Grafana dashboards in YAML format, and uses them to produce JSON formatted output suitable for direct import into Grafana.

The tool uses the Voluptuous data validation library to ensure the input produces a valid dashboard. Along with validation, users receive the benefits of YAML markup such as comments and clearer type support.

For example, here is a minimal dashboard specification

dashboard:
  time:
    from: "2018-02-07T08:42:27.000Z"
    to: "2018-02-07T13:48:32.000Z"
  templating:
    - name: hostname
      type: query
      datasource: graphite
      query: node*
      refresh: true
  title: My great dashboard
  rows:
    - title: CPU Usage
      height: 250px
      panels:
          - title: CPU Usage for $hostname
            type: graph
            datasource: graphite
            targets:
              - target: $hostname.Cpu.cpu_prct_used

grafyaml can be very useful in continuous-integration environments. Users can specify their dashboards via a normal review process and tests can validate their correctness.

The tool can also take JSON manually exported from the Grafana interface and load it as a dashboard. This allows keeping dashboards that have been edited with the inbuilt editor externally version controlled.

A large number of examples are available in the OpenStack project-config repository, which are used to create dashboards on http://grafana.openstack.org.