Migration from simple json data source plugin

[yesoreyeram]

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Grafana's simple JSON datasource plugin is a legacy way of connecting JSON endpoints from Grafana. This requires you to run your own http server that implements certain HTTP endpoints such as /, /search, /query and /annotations endpoint and require to return data in certain format. This plugin was build for older versions of Grafana and no longer maintained. Also this plugin was built using legacy AngularJS technology which is now deprecated in recent versions of Grafana. This makes this plugin unusable anymore.

Migrating to infinity plugin

Important

Infinity is not a drop-in replacement for simple JSON datasource plugin. This require manual migration efforts. But migrating to infinity is strongly recommended approach if you are using simple JSON API datasource plugin.

Approach 1 : Direct API connection / Simple approach / Recommended approach

This is much easier and recommended approach to connect JSON api endpoints directly. Infinity allows you to connect directly to your JSON endpoints instead of requiring you to write your server implementation comparing to grafana simple json server approach. Refer Infinity plugin website for more details about connecting your APIs directly.

With this approach, you can get rid of your custom json server and directly connect your API endpoints via Infinity plugin. If this approach is not possible for any reason, use the below alternate migration approach.

Approach 2 : Migrating using Grafana simple json server approach

With this approach, Instead of connecting your API endpoints directly, you will be connecting via grafana simple JSON server (legacy server). Also in grafana, instead of using simple json datasource plugin, you will be using Infinity plugin.

Migrating the configuration

In terms of configuration editor, there is no much change. The URL used in simple json datasource goes into infinity config misc/url section. Other options such as proxy, tls/ca certificates, headers goes into network and headers section.

Before	After

Provisioning

Provisioning of simple json and infinity is almost similar only the plugin id differs. Refer the infinity plugin provisioning documentation for more examples.

Before	After

Migrating the queries ( quick migration / frontend parser )

If you are using one or more queries using Simple JSON as shown below, you can migrate to infinity using the steps provided below. This approach is simple but less powerful. Doesn't support grafana backend features such as alerting.

Before	After
Select the target in the query editor. Example upper_25	Select JSON as query type. Select Default/Frontend as your parser. Source: URL. Format: As IS/Legacy. HTTP Method: POST. URL : /query HTTP Body: In your http body you need to specify the targets: { "targets": [{ "target":"upper_25" }] }

Migrating the queries ( recommended migration / backend parser )

Use this approach to migrate to get support for features such as alerting, public dashboards, query caching etc.

Before	After
Select the target in the query editor. Example upper_25	Query Type: URL Parser: Backend Source: URL Format: Time series HTTP method: POST URL: /query BODY: { "targets": [{ "target":"upper_25" }]} Parsing options/Root: datapoints Column 1: 0 as selector. upper_25 as alias. Number as format. Column 2: 1 as selector. Time as alias. Unix (ms) as format.

Migrating the annotations

Migrating the annotations is similar to query. For example, below screenoshots show different annotation creations

Using Simple JSON

Using Infinity

Troubleshooting

Note

Infinity doesn't support direct browser connection to your API endpoints. All the requests will be proxied from grafana server.

Sample migration dashboard

[peret2000]

Thanks a lot for this guide for migration. Unfortunately, images cannot be opened or saved to file, so it is really difficult to have a look at them. If you could give access to the images, it would be great. Thanks!

[yesoreyeram]

Have you tried right click and save the image? Or just use your browser zoom. ( Am I missing something else )...?

[peret2000]

I tried both methods (and also copying the link). But for some reason, just afeter writing the comment I could see the images. I thought you arranged it very fast, or thta the fact of writing the comment did the trick (!!!). But probably, neither of them was the issue, simply there was some mitake in my browser. But anyway, it is ok. Sorry for the confusion

[james00002]

I have the same problem with the images. Some of them are much to tiny to read, even if I use maximum browser zoom.
If I open the images in a new tab, I usually get a 404 error from githubusercontent.com but occasionally, seemingly at random, they will open up okay.

[peret2000]

Some time later, I found the error is due to the default or active google user in the browser (using Chrome). It tried to open github with a user that perhaps is not authenticated in github. Switching the user, or refreshing this page did the trick

[james00002]

There really needs to be a way to extract the "Columns" in the "Parsing options & Result fields" section from the same Json format that simple-json-datasource supported.

Without that feature, Infinity isn't really usable as a replacement.

Suppose a simple-json target had 20 columns defined. All of those showed up with grafana datatypes in the "columns" section of the response. Now it is necessary to manually type in those 20 column definitions for every single panel that uses the target :(