Caution
Grafana Alloy is the new name for our distribution of the OTel collector. Grafana Agent has been deprecated and is in Long-Term Support (LTS) through October 31, 2025. Grafana Agent will reach an End-of-Life (EOL) on November 1, 2025. Read more about why we recommend migrating to Grafana Alloy.
discovery.http
discovery.http provides a flexible way to define targets by querying an external http endpoint.
It fetches targets from an HTTP endpoint containing a list of zero or more target definitions. The target must reply with an HTTP 200 response. The HTTP header Content-Type must be application/json, and the body must be valid JSON.
Example response body:
[
{
"targets": [ "<host>", ... ],
"labels": {
"<labelname>": "<labelvalue>", ...
}
},
...
]It is possible to use additional fields in the JSON to pass parameters to prometheus.scrape such as the metricsPath and scrape_interval.
As an example, the following will provide a target with a custom metricsPath, scrape interval, and timeout value:
[
{
"labels" : {
"__metrics_path__" : "/api/prometheus",
"__scheme__" : "https",
"__scrape_interval__" : "60s",
"__scrape_timeout__" : "10s",
"service" : "custom-api-service"
},
"targets" : [
"custom-api:443"
]
},
]It is also possible to append query parameters to the metrics path with the __param_<name> syntax.
For example, the following will call a metrics path of /health?target_data=prometheus:
[
{
"labels" : {
"__metrics_path__" : "/health",
"__scheme__" : "https",
"__scrape_interval__" : "60s",
"__scrape_timeout__" : "10s",
"__param_target_data": "prometheus",
"service" : "custom-api-service"
},
"targets" : [
"custom-api:443"
]
},
]For more information on the potential labels you can use, see the prometheus.scrape technical details section, or the Prometheus Configuration documentation.
Usage
discovery.http "LABEL" {
url = URL
}Arguments
The following arguments are supported:
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
url | string | URL to scrape. | yes | |
refresh_interval | duration | How often to refresh targets. | "60s" | no |
bearer_token_file | string | File containing a bearer token to authenticate with. | no | |
bearer_token | secret | Bearer token to authenticate with. | no | |
enable_http2 | bool | Whether HTTP2 is supported for requests. | true | no |
follow_redirects | bool | Whether redirects returned by the server should be followed. | true | no |
proxy_url | string | HTTP proxy to send requests through. | no | |
no_proxy | string | Comma-separated list of IP addresses, CIDR notations, and domain names to exclude from proxying. | no | |
proxy_from_environment | bool | Use the proxy URL indicated by environment variables. | false | no |
proxy_connect_header | map(list(secret)) | Specifies headers to send to proxies during CONNECT requests. | no |
At most, one of the following can be provided:
no_proxy can contain IPs, CIDR notations, and domain names. IP and domain
names can contain port numbers. proxy_url must be configured if no_proxy
is configured.
proxy_from_environment uses the environment variables HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY
and NO_PROXY (or the lowercase versions thereof). Requests use the proxy from
the environment variable matching their scheme, unless excluded by NO_PROXY.
proxy_url and no_proxy must not be configured if proxy_from_environment
is configured.
proxy_connect_header should only be configured if proxy_url or proxy_from_environment are configured.
Blocks
The following blocks are supported inside the definition of
discovery.http:
| Hierarchy | Block | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| basic_auth | basic_auth | Configure basic_auth for authenticating to the endpoint. | no |
| authorization | authorization | Configure generic authorization to the endpoint. | no |
| oauth2 | oauth2 | Configure OAuth2 for authenticating to the endpoint. | no |
| oauth2 > tls_config | tls_config | Configure TLS settings for connecting to the endpoint. | no |
| tls_config | tls_config | Configure TLS settings for connecting to the endpoint. | no |
The > symbol indicates deeper levels of nesting. For example,
oauth2 > tls_config refers to a tls_config block defined inside
an oauth2 block.
basic_auth block
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
password_file | string | File containing the basic auth password. | no | |
password | secret | Basic auth password. | no | |
username | string | Basic auth username. | no |
password and password_file are mutually exclusive, and only one can be provided inside a basic_auth block.
authorization block
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
credentials_file | string | File containing the secret value. | no | |
credentials | secret | Secret value. | no | |
type | string | Authorization type, for example, “Bearer”. | no |
credential and credentials_file are mutually exclusive, and only one can be provided inside an authorization block.
oauth2 block
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
client_id | string | OAuth2 client ID. | no | |
client_secret_file | string | File containing the OAuth2 client secret. | no | |
client_secret | secret | OAuth2 client secret. | no | |
endpoint_params | map(string) | Optional parameters to append to the token URL. | no | |
proxy_url | string | HTTP proxy to send requests through. | no | |
no_proxy | string | Comma-separated list of IP addresses, CIDR notations, and domain names to exclude from proxying. | no | |
proxy_from_environment | bool | Use the proxy URL indicated by environment variables. | false | no |
proxy_connect_header | map(list(secret)) | Specifies headers to send to proxies during CONNECT requests. | no | |
scopes | list(string) | List of scopes to authenticate with. | no | |
token_url | string | URL to fetch the token from. | no |
client_secret and client_secret_file are mutually exclusive, and only one can be provided inside an oauth2 block.
The oauth2 block may also contain a separate tls_config sub-block.
no_proxy can contain IPs, CIDR notations, and domain names. IP and domain
names can contain port numbers. proxy_url must be configured if no_proxy
is configured.
proxy_from_environment uses the environment variables HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY
and NO_PROXY (or the lowercase versions thereof). Requests use the proxy from
the environment variable matching their scheme, unless excluded by NO_PROXY.
proxy_url and no_proxy must not be configured if proxy_from_environment
is configured.
proxy_connect_header should only be configured if proxy_url or proxy_from_environment are configured.
tls_config block
| Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ca_pem | string | CA PEM-encoded text to validate the server with. | no | |
ca_file | string | CA certificate to validate the server with. | no | |
cert_pem | string | Certificate PEM-encoded text for client authentication. | no | |
cert_file | string | Certificate file for client authentication. | no | |
insecure_skip_verify | bool | Disables validation of the server certificate. | no | |
key_file | string | Key file for client authentication. | no | |
key_pem | secret | Key PEM-encoded text for client authentication. | no | |
min_version | string | Minimum acceptable TLS version. | no | |
server_name | string | ServerName extension to indicate the name of the server. | no |
The following pairs of arguments are mutually exclusive and can’t both be set simultaneously:
ca_pemandca_filecert_pemandcert_filekey_pemandkey_file
When configuring client authentication, both the client certificate (using
cert_pem or cert_file) and the client key (using key_pem or key_file)
must be provided.
When min_version is not provided, the minimum acceptable TLS version is
inherited from Go’s default minimum version, TLS 1.2. If min_version is
provided, it must be set to one of the following strings:
"TLS10"(TLS 1.0)"TLS11"(TLS 1.1)"TLS12"(TLS 1.2)"TLS13"(TLS 1.3)
Exported fields
The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components:
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
targets | list(map(string)) | The set of targets discovered from the filesystem. |
Each target includes the following labels:
__meta_url: URL the target was obtained from.
Component health
discovery.http is only reported as unhealthy when given an invalid
configuration. In those cases, exported fields retain their last healthy
values.
Debug information
discovery.http does not expose any component-specific debug information.
Debug metrics
prometheus_sd_http_failures_total(counter): Total number of refresh failures.
Examples
This example will query a url every 15 seconds and expose targets that it finds:
discovery.http "dynamic_targets" {
url = "https://example.com/scrape_targets"
refresh_interval = "15s"
}Compatible components
discovery.http has exports that can be consumed by the following components:
- Components that consume Targets
Note
Connecting some components may not be sensible or components may require further configuration to make the connection work correctly. Refer to the linked documentation for more details.



