The Best Tools for Exporting data from Grafana

As a tool for visualizing data for time series databases, Logging & document databases, SQL, and Cloud, Grafana is a perfect choice. Its UI interface allows creating a dashboard and visualizations in minutes and analyzing the data with its help.

Despite having tons of visualizations, the open-source version of Grafana does not have advanced reporting capability. Automating the export of data into CSV, Excel, or PDF requires additional plugins.

We wrote an honest and unbiased review of the following tools that are available for exporting data directly from Grafana.

1. Grafana reporter
2. Grafana Data Exporter
3. Skedler Reports

1. Grafana Reporter

https://github.com/IzakMarais/reporter

A simple Http service that generates *.PDF reports from Grafana dashboards.

Runtime requirements

• pdflatex installed and available in PATH.
• a running Grafana instance that it can connect to. If you are using an old Grafana (version < v5.0), see Deprecated Endpoint below.

Build requirements:

• Golang

Pros of Grafana Reporter

• Simply embeddable tool for Grafana
• Uses simple curl commands and arguments

Cons of Grafana Reporter

• You need pdflatex and Golang. So you must install a Golang environment in your system.
• For non-technical users, it’s difficult to use

2. Grafana Data Exporter

https://github.com/CorpGlory/grafana-data-exporter

Server for fetching data from Grafana data sources. You would you use it:

• To export your metrics on a big range
• To migrate from one data source to another

Runtime requirements

• Linux.
• Docker

Installation

• grafana-data-exporter for fetching data from Grafana data sources.
• Simple-JSON-data source for progress tracking.
• grafana-data-exporter-panel for exporting metrics from the dashboard.
• Import exporting template dashboard at http://<YOUR_GRAFANA_URL>/dashboard/import.

Pros of Grafana Data Exporter

• Faster writing of documents
• Added as a Grafana panel

Cons of Grafana Data Exporter

• To automate the exporting of data on a periodic basis, you need to write your own cron job
• Grafana Data Exporter installation is a bit tricky for non-technical users

3. Skedler Reports

https://www.skedler.com/

Disclosure: Skedler Reports is one of our products.

Skedler offers a simple and easy to add reporting and alerting solution for Elastic Stack and Grafana. There is also a plugin for Kibana that is easy to install and use with the Elasticsearch data. It’s called Skedler Reports as Kibana Plugin.

Pros of Skedler Reports

• Simple to install, configure, and use
• Send HTML, PDF, XLS, CSV reports on-demand or periodically via email or #slack
• Report setup takes less than 5 minute
• Easy to use, no coding required

Cons of Skedler Reports

• It requires a paid license which includes software and also enterprise support
• Installation is difficult for users who are not fully familiar with Elastic Stack or Grafana

What tools do you use? 

Do you have to regularly export data from Grafana for external analysis or reporting purposes?  Do you use any other third-party tools? Email us about the tool at hello at skedler.com.

An Easy Way to Export / Import Dashboards, Searches and Visualizations from Kibana

Introduction

Manually recreating Kibana dashboards, searches, and visualizations during upgrades, production deployment or recovery is a time-consuming affair. The easiest way to recreate the prebuilt Kibana dashboard and other objects is by exporting and importing dashboards, searches, and visualizations. This can be achieved by using,

• Kibana API (available since Kibana 7.x) 
• Kibana UI

If are you looking to export and import the Kibana dashboards and its dependencies automatically, we recommend the Kibana API’s. Also, you can export and import dashboard from Kibana UI.

Note: User should add the dependencies of the dashboards like visualization, index pattern individually while exporting or importing from Kibana UI.

Export Objects From Kibana API

The export API enables you to retrieve a set of saved objects that can later be imported into Kibana.

Request

POST /api/saved_objects/_export

Request Body

At least type or objects must be passed in within the request body.

type (optional)

(array/string) The saved object type(s) that the export should be limited to.

The following example exports all index pattern saved objects.

POST api/saved_objects/_export { “type”: “index-pattern” }

Example Curl:

curl -X POST “http://localhost:5601/api/saved_objects/_export” -H ‘kbn-xsrf: true’ -H ‘Content-Type: application/json’ -d’ { “type”: “index-pattern” } ‘

objects (optional)

(array) A list of objects to export

The following example exports specific saved objects.

POST api/saved_objects/_export

{

  “objects”: [

    {

      “type”: “dashboard”,

      “id”: “be3733a0-9efe-11e7-acb3-3dab96693fab”

    }  ]

}

Example Curl:

curl -X POST “http://localhost:5601/api/saved_objects/_export” -H ‘kbn-xsrf: true’ -H ‘Content-Type: application/json’ -d’ { “objects”: [ { “type”: “dashboard”, 

“id”: “be3733a0-9efe-11e7-acb3-3dab96693fab” } ] } ‘

Response Body

The response body will have a format of newline delimited JSON and the successful call returns a response code of 200 along with the exported objects as the response body.

Import Objects From Kibana API

The import API enables you to create a set of Kibana saved objects from a file created by the export API.

Request

POST /api/saved_objects/_import

Request Body

The request body must be of type multipart/form-data.

File

A file exported using the export API.

Example

The following example imports an index pattern and dashboard.

curl -X POST “localhost:5601/api/saved_objects/_import” -H “kbn-xsrf: true” –form file=@file.ndjson

The file.ndjson file would contain the following.

{“type”:”index-pattern”,”id”:”my-pattern”,”attributes”:{“title”:”my-pattern-*”}}

{“type”:”dashboard”,”id”:”my-dashboard”,”attributes”:{“title”:”Look at my dashboard”}

Response Body

A successful call returns a response code of 200 and a response body containing a JSON structure similar to the following example:

{

  “success”: true,

  “successCount”: 2

}

Export Objects From Kibana UI:

You can now export your objects from Kibana UI under Management > Saved Objects > Export. Select the checkboxes of the objects you want to export, and click Export. Or to export objects by type:

• Click Export objects.
• Select the object types you want to export.
• Click Export All.

Import Objects From Kibana UI:

 You can import your JSON file from Kibana UI under Management > Saved Objects > Import. Follow the below steps to import your 

• Click Import.
• Navigate to the JSON file that represents the objects to import.
• Indicate whether to overwrite objects already in Kibana.
• Click Import.

Summary:

Exporting and importing the saved objects from the Kibana is an effective and easiest way to recreate dashboards and other objects in new environments or during migrations.

If you are looking to automate and make the process simpler,  we recommend using the Kibana APIs or else you can use the Kibana UI for granular export and import.