Open in Grafana Cloud
Complete this learning path directly in your Grafana Cloud stack, or in the Grafana Play stack, with an interactive learning experience.
Build a dashboard with the Foundation SDK
Welcome to the learning path that shows you how to define a Grafana dashboard as strongly typed code using the Foundation SDK. Instead of clicking through the UI, you write code that produces valid Grafana dashboard JSON, ready for version control, code review, and automated deployment.
The Grafana Foundation SDK provides builder classes in Go and TypeScript that let you compose dashboards step-by-step using chained method calls. Strong typing catches errors at compile time, and the output is standard Grafana dashboard JSON.
Here’s what to expect
When you complete this journey, you’ll be able to:
- Set up a project with the Foundation SDK installed
- Create a dashboard definition using the builder pattern
- Add stat and time series panels with data queries
- Export your dashboard as deployment-ready JSON
- Verify the output is valid and contains the expected structure
Before you begin
Before you build a dashboard with the Foundation SDK, ensure you have:
- Go 1.21+ or Node.js 18+ installed, depending on your language preference
- A terminal and code editor
- A Grafana Cloud account (for optional manual import verification). To create one, refer to Grafana Cloud.
Troubleshooting
If you get stuck, we’ve got your back! Where appropriate, troubleshooting information is just a click away.
More to explore
We understand you might want to explore other capabilities not strictly on this path. We’ll provide you opportunities where it makes sense.
