Writing a new Plugin

arkash20 · September 24, 2019, 2:33pm

Hi Everyone,

I’m currently trying to figure out how to start writing a datasource plugin.
I read the docs for developers and looked on some ready code ( jsonsimple, elastic ).
I have few questions which may help me in understating how to build for myself the environment for writing the plugin.

right now, Im using visual code in Linux to writhe the code in typescript. after every change Im restarting the server to see the affect. is this the right/best way? any tips ?
where I can see the flow of the execution of the files? I know datasource.ts/js is the mail file and there are some more,but where I can see the order of the execution?
I see elastic uses function imported from here : @grafana/ui
how can I see the functions that are implemented there?
suppose I have some variable which I want to see the value it gets while running…what is the best way to see that? go to browser and click inspect?

thanks in advance
and have a wonderful day,

Arkady Mankovsky

hsdtsyl · September 25, 2019, 6:44am

It seems that the authorities don’t want the community to be good.

no docs, no guidelines, no reply;

peterholmberg · September 25, 2019, 7:50am

Could these links be useful?

github.com

marcusolsson/grafana-csv-datasource/blob/master/docs/getting-started-datasource-plugin.md

# Writing your first data source plugin for Grafana

Grafana has support for a wide range of data sources, like Prometheus, MySQL, or even Datadog. This means that it’s very likely that you can already visualize metrics from the systems you've already set up. In some cases though, you might already have an in-house metrics solution that you’d like to add to your Grafana dashboards. Luckily, Grafana supports _data source_ plugins, which lets you build a custom integration for your specific source of data.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to build a data source plugin for visualizing CSV files. At the end of this guide, you'll have a working example of a data source plugin, and understand how you can extend it to support the specific use-case you have in mind.

## Preparations

First of all, we'll create a project directory for our plugin.

### Requirements

- NodeJS
- yarn

### Directory structure

Create a new directory and initialize your module. Also, go ahead and create a `src` directory within your module, to hold our source code. 

```

This file has been truncated. show original

github.com

marcusolsson/grafana-csv-datasource/blob/master/docs/adding-datasource-backend.md

# Adding a backend to a Grafana Data Source

In the previous part of this guide, we looked at how to get started with writing data source plugins for Grafana. For many data sources, integrating a custom data source can be done completely in the Grafana browser client. For others, you might want the plugin to be able to continue running even after closing your browser window, such as alerting, or authentication.

Luckily, Grafana has support for _backend plugins_, which lets your data source plugin communicate with a process running on the server.

Last time, we started writing a data source plugin that would read CSV files. Let's see how a backend plugin lets you read a file on the server and return the data back to the client.

## Requirements

- Go

## Creating the backend plugin

Create another directory `backend` in your project root directory, containing a `main.go` file. The Grafana backend plugin system uses the [go-plugin](https://github.com/hashicorp/go-plugin) library from [Hashicorp](https://www.hashicorp.com/), and while communication happens over gRPC, here we'll use a Go client library that wraps the boilerplate for you.

```go
// backend/main.go
package main

This file has been truncated. show original

arkash20 · September 25, 2019, 7:55am

it seems very helpful! thank you very much:)

Topic		Replies	Views
Developing Datasource Plugin in React Grafana templating , api	7	2742	September 26, 2019
Need a beginner guideline for development of datasource plugin Grafana Plugin Development	10	3842	December 10, 2021
How to Develop Custom Plugins Grafana	1	378	February 14, 2018
Changes to datasource plugin not reflecting on grafana dashboard Grafana Plugin Development	3	1745	July 17, 2018
Datasource plugin for DB2 Grafana Plugin Development	1	1965	September 12, 2019

Writing a new Plugin

Related topics