InfluxDB data source on Grafana Labs

Flux support in Grafana

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:11:32 +0000

InfluxDB query editor

This topic explains querying specific to the InfluxDB data source. For general documentation on querying data sources in Grafana, see Query and transform data.

Choose a query editing mode

The InfluxDB data source’s query editor has two modes depending on your choice of query language in the data source configuration:

You also use the query editor to retrieve log data and annotate visualizations.

InfluxQL query editor

The InfluxQL query editor helps you select metrics and tags to create InfluxQL queries.

To enter edit mode:

Click the panel title.
Click Edit.

Filter data (WHERE)

To add a tag filter, click the plus icon to the right of the WHERE condition.

To remove tag filters, click the tag key, then select –remove tag filter–.

Match by regular expressions

You can enter regular expressions for metric names or tag filter values. Wrap the regex pattern in forward slashes (/).

Grafana automatically adjusts the filter tag condition to use the InfluxDB regex match condition operator (=~).

Field and aggregation functions

In the SELECT row, you can specify which fields and functions to use.

If you have a group by time, you must have an aggregation function. Some functions like derivative also require an aggregation function.

The editor helps you build this part of the query. For example:

This query editor input generates an InfluxDB SELECT clause:

SELECT derivative(mean("value"), 10s) /10 AS "REQ/s" FROM ....

To select multiple fields:

Click the plus button.
Select Field > field to add another SELECT clause.

You can also SELECT an asterisk (*) to select all fields.

Group query results

To group results by a tag, define it in a “Group By”.

To group by a tag:

Click the plus icon at the end of the GROUP BY row.
Select a tag from the dropdown that appears.

To remove the “Group By”:

Click the tag.
Click the “x” icon.

Text editor mode (RAW)

You can write raw InfluxQL queries by switching the editor mode. However, be careful when writing queries manually.

If you use raw query mode, your query must include at least WHERE $timeFilter.

Also, always provide a group by time and an aggregation function. Otherwise, InfluxDB can easily return hundreds of thousands of data points that can hang your browser.

To switch to raw query mode:

Click the hamburger icon.
Toggle Switch editor mode.

Alias patterns

Alias pattern	Replaced with
`$m`	Measurement name.
`$measurement`	Measurement name.
`$1` - `$9`	Part of measurement name (if you separate your measurement name with dots).
`$col`	Column name.
`$tag_exampletag`	The value of the `exampletag` tag. The syntax is `$tagyourTagName` and must start with `$tag`. To use your tag as an alias in the ALIAS BY field, you must use the tag to group by in the query.

You can also use [[tag_hostname]] pattern replacement syntax.

For example, entering the value Host: [[tag_hostname]] in the ALIAS BY field replaces it with the hostname tag value for each legend value. An example legend value would be Host: server1.

Flux query editor

Grafana supports Flux when running InfluxDB v1.8 and higher. If your data source is configured for Flux, you can use the Flux query and scripting language in the query editor, which serves as a text editor for raw Flux queries with macro support.

For more information and connection details, refer to 1.8 compatibility.

Use macros

You can enter macros in the query to replace them with values from Grafana’s context. Macros support copying and pasting from Chronograf.

Macro example	Replaced with
`v.timeRangeStart`	The start of the currently active time selection, such as `2020-06-11T13:31:00Z`.
`v.timeRangeStop`	The end of the currently active time selection, such as `2020-06-11T14:31:00Z`.
`v.windowPeriod`	An interval string compatible with Flux that corresponds to Grafana’s calculated interval based on the time range of the active time selection, such as `5s`.
`v.defaultBucket`	The data source configuration’s “Default Bucket” setting.
`v.organization`	The data source configuration’s “Organization” setting.

For example, the query editor interpolates this query:

from(bucket: v.defaultBucket)
  |> range(start: v.timeRangeStart, stop: v.timeRangeStop)
  |> filter(fn: (r) => r["_measurement"] == "cpu" or r["_measurement"] == "swap")
  |> filter(fn: (r) => r["_field"] == "usage_system" or r["_field"] == "free")
  |> aggregateWindow(every: v.windowPeriod, fn: mean)
  |> yield(name: "mean")

Into this query to send to InfluxDB, with interval and time period values changing according to the active time selection:

from(bucket: "grafana")
  |> range(start: 2020-06-11T13:59:07Z, stop: 2020-06-11T14:59:07Z)
  |> filter(fn: (r) => r["_measurement"] == "cpu" or r["_measurement"] == "swap")
  |> filter(fn: (r) => r["_field"] == "usage_system" or r["_field"] == "free")
  |> aggregateWindow(every: 2s, fn: mean)
  |> yield(name: "mean")

To view the interpolated version of a query with the query inspector, refer to Panel Inspector.

Query logs

You can query and display log data from InfluxDB in Explore and with the Logs panel for dashboards.

Select the InfluxDB data source, then enter a query to display your logs.

Create log queries

The Logs Explorer next to the query field, accessed by the Measurements/Fields button, lists measurements and fields. Choose the desired measurement that contains your log data, then choose which field to use to display the log message.

Once InfluxDB returns the result, the log panel lists log rows and displays a bar chart, where the x axis represents the time and the y axis represents the frequency/count.

Filter search

To add a filter, click the plus icon to the right of the Measurements/Fields button, or next to a condition.

To remove tag filters, click the first select, then choose –remove filter–.

Apply annotations

Annotations overlay rich event information on top of graphs. You can add annotation queries in the Dashboard menu’s Annotations view.

For InfluxDB, your query must include WHERE $timeFilter.

If you select only one column, you don’t need to enter anything in the column mapping fields.

The Tags field’s value can be a comma-separated string.

Annotation query example

SELECT title, description from events WHERE $timeFilter ORDER BY time ASC

InfluxDB template variables

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 16:11:32 +0000

InfluxDB template variables

Instead of hard-coding details such as server, application, and sensor names in metric queries, you can use variables. Grafana lists these variables in dropdown select boxes at the top of the dashboard to help you change the data displayed in your dashboard. Grafana refers to such variables as template variables.

For an introduction to templating and template variables, refer to the Templating and Add and manage variables documentation.

Use query variables

If you add a query template variable, you can write an InfluxDB exploration (metadata) query. These queries can return results like measurement names, key names, or key values.

For more information, refer to Add query variable.

For example, to create a variable that contains all values for tag hostname, specify a query like this in the query variable Query:

SHOW TAG VALUES WITH KEY = "hostname"

Chain or nest variables

You can also create nested variables, sometimes called chained variables.

For example, if you had a variable called region, you could have the hosts variable show only hosts from the selected region with a query like:

SHOW TAG VALUES WITH KEY = "hostname"  WHERE region = '$region'

You can fetch key names for a given measurement:

SHOW TAG KEYS [FROM <measurement_name>]

If you have a variable with key names, you can use this variable in a group-by clause. This helps you change group-by using the variable list at the top of the dashboard.

Use ad hoc filters

InfluxDB supports the special Ad hoc filters variable type. You can use this variable type to specify any number of key/value filters, and Grafana applies them automatically to all of your InfluxDB queries.

For more information, refer to Add ad hoc filters.

Choose a variable syntax

The InfluxDB data source supports two variable syntaxes for use in the Query field:

$<varname>, which is easier to read and write but does not allow you to use a variable in the middle of a word.

SELECT mean("value") FROM "logins" WHERE "hostname" =~ /^$host$/ AND $timeFilter GROUP BY time($__interval), "hostname"

${varname}

SELECT mean("value") FROM "logins" WHERE "hostname" =~ /^[[host]]$/ AND $timeFilter GROUP BY time($__interval), "hostname"

When you enable the Multi-value or Include all value options, Grafana converts the labels from plain text to a regex-compatible string, so you must use =~ instead of =.

Templated dashboard example

To view an example templated dashboard, refer to InfluxDB Templated Dashboard.