VS Code Extension for Grafana

Grafana has an extensive UI for editing its dashboards. For many, this is sufficient for their needs. If this is you, this extension is not for you.

However, some wish to use software development tools (e.g. git) to manage their dashboards and other observability resources. Dashboards can be exported as JSON, however this JSON is hard to understand and interpret. This extension allows you to:

• Open a Grafana dashboard JSON file
• Start a live preview of that dashboard inside VS Code, connected to live data from a Grafana instance of your choice
• Edit the dashboard in the preview, using the normal Grafana dashboard editor UI
• From the editor UI, save the updated dashboard back to the original JSON file

Managing dashboards as code moves the single source of truth from Grafana itself to your version control system, which allows for dashboards to participate in gitops style workflows that are commonly used for much of the rest of software development.

This library is experimental

The code in this repository should be considered experimental. Documentation is only available alongside the code. It comes without support, but we are keen to receive feedback on the product and suggestions on how to improve it, though we cannot commit to resolution of any particular issue. No SLAs are available. It is not meant to be used in production environments, and the risks are unknown/high.

Additional information can be found in Release life cycle for Grafana Labs.

Why Work With Dashboards as Code?

• JSON dashboards can be stored in your version control system. This provides a simple solution for rollback, history, auditing, and even change control.
• If you have change-control policies for your Grafana stack, this extension allows you and other developers to test and verify dashboard changes before deploying them
• Dashboards can be generated with tools like Grafonnet
• Dashboards can be integrated into your IaC practices using Terraform, Ansible, Grafana Operator, or Grizzly

Features

• Reads a dashboard JSON you have locally.
• Opens the dashboard configured in the JSON in a running Grafana instance, right inside your IDE.
• Allows you to edit the dashboard from the UI.
• Saves your changes to your JSON when you hit "Save" in the preview.

Requirements

• Have a dashboard JSON handy.
• Have a running instance of Grafana locally or have access to a hosted Grafana instance.
• If you intend to use a dashboard across multiple Grafana instances, you will need to use datasources that have been deployed via the API, as these datasources will require consistent UIDs.

Usage:

Install from the Marketplace

1. Select the Extensions icon () on the left bar in VSCode.
2. Enter Grafana into the search box. Select the option for Grafana / Grafana Editor and click Install.
3. Open the Settings tab inside the extension (CTRL+, (comma) or cmd + , on Mac) and search for grafana. Then select Extensions.

Configure the Extension

1. Provide the default URL for your Grafana instance in the URL field. If you are using a local Grafana instance, the default value is http://localhost:3000.
2. Create a Service account in Grafana and add a token to it.
3. In the VS Code settings, click Set your token, securely then paste your token into the popup. Press ENTER.

Using the Extension

1. Open a folder on your computer that has some dashboard JSON (if you don't have any of your own, navigate to the dashboards folder of this repo).
2. Right-click on a dashboard JSON file in the file explorer and select Edit in Grafana.
3. Have fun!
4. Note, clicking save on your dashboard will update the JSON file in your local folder.

Run from Repository

1. If using local Grafana, start Grafana locally or via Docker.
2. Run yarn install in this repo.
3. Open this repo VS Code, then press F5 to start the extension locally.
4. Continue from step 4 above.

Develop

To make changes to this codebase, follow the instructions about how to run from this repository. Then, in your original VS Code window, make changes to the extension. Then, restart the extension with either CTRL+SHIFT+F5 (CMD+SHIFT+F5 on a Mac) or by clicking the green restart circle.

To view debug logs, use CTRL+SHIFT+P (CMD+SHIFT+P on Mac) then select "Developer: Open Webview Developer Tools".

Extension Settings

• grafana-vscode.URL: Set the URL of the Grafana instance you want to open the dashboard in. Defaults to 'http://localhost:3000'.
• grafana-vscode.service-account-token: A Service Account token. This is stored in the operating system secret store. Defaults to an empty string.

Extension communication with Grafana

Details of how this extension communicates with Grafana is available here.