Build a dashboard using the Infinity data source

The instructions in this milestone are based on the publicly available Traffic density JSON file, which has the following structure.

JSON Copy

{
  "channel": {
    "id": 38629,
    "name": "Traffic Monitor",
    "description": "Traffic Monitor showing density of cars detected",
    "latitude": "42.28",
    "longitude": "-71.35",
    "field1": "Density of Westbound Cars",
    "field2": "Density of Eastbound Cars",
    "created_at": "2015-05-19T20:14:03Z",
    "updated_at": "2019-07-24T20:12:00Z",
    "last_entry_id": 18679924
  },
  "feeds": [
    {
      "created_at": "2025-04-02T17:44:34Z",
      "entry_id": 18679825,
      "field1": "7.000000",
      "field2": "7.000000"
    },

To build a dashboard with the Infinity data source, complete the following steps:

1. Search for the Infinity data source and select it.

2. In the URL field, enter the URL endpoint of the JSON data you want to visualize.

   For example: https://thingspeak.com/channels/38629/feed.json

3. Expand Parsing options & Result fields.

4. In the Rows/Root field, enter a row name.

   For example, enter feeds.

Did you know?

Many APIs return more data than what you want to show in Grafana. For example, they might return metadata about the number of records, the last time the data was updated, or sensor location. The Infinity data source gives you the ability to specify the section of data that’s relevant for your graph. In the traffic density data, the relevant section is the feeds field. Specifying this field means that the visualization will only contain data that belongs to that section.

5. Click Add Columns.

6. Complete the following fields:

   • Selector, for example created_at
   • Title, for example Created at
   • format as, for example Time

7. Continue adding columns, as necessary.

8. Click Refresh.

   You should see a dashboard preview.

9. Click Save dashboard.

10. Enter a message and click Save.

The dashboard is now available for others to see.