Grafana Dashboard API Patterns

Creating a dashboard via REST API

After the Prometheus data source is created, provision dashboards via POST to /api/dashboards/db:

curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:3002/api/dashboards/db \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -u admin:admin \
  -d @dashboard.json

Response: {"id":..., "uid":"...", "slug":"...", "status":"success", "url":"/d/uid/title"}

Common node_exporter panel queries

CPU Usage (stat or timeseries)

avg by(instance) (1 - rate(node_cpu_seconds_total{mode='idle'}[5m]))

RAM Usage (gauge or timeseries)

1 - (node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes / node_memory_MemTotal_bytes)

Bytes variant: node_memory_MemTotal_bytes - node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes

Disk Usage (gauge)

1 - (node_filesystem_avail_bytes{mountpoint='/'} / node_filesystem_size_bytes{mountpoint='/'})

Uptime (stat)

time() - node_boot_time_seconds

Panel layout reference (gridPos)

The dashboard grid is 24 columns wide. Common layouts:

Panel	gridPos	Width
Single stat	`{h:8, w:6, x:0, y:0}`	1/4 width
Timeseries full	`{h:10, w:12, x:0, y:8}`	1/2 width
Two stat row	`{h:8, w:12, x:0, y:0}` + `{h:8, w:12, x:12, y:0}`	1/2 each

Adding a Prometheus data source

curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:3002/api/datasources \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -u admin:admin \
  -d '{
    "name":"Prometheus",
    "type":"prometheus",
    "url":"http://127.0.0.1:9090",
    "access":"proxy",
    "isDefault":true
  }'

Response: {"datasource":{"id":1,"uid":"...","name":"Prometheus",...},"message":"Datasource added"}

Pitfalls

Auth: Use -u admin:admin (or whatever password was set with GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD). Default is admin/admin.
Default data source: Set "isDefault":true so panels don't need an explicit data source reference.
Overwriting: When re-importing, send "overwrite": true in the payload body (at the same level as "dashboard").
Time range: Set "time": {"from": "now-6h", "to": "now"} and "refresh": "30s" at the dashboard level.

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