Exploring Grafana events

Grafana leverages an event bus to broadcast application events, enabling different parts of the system to respond when a user interacts with the interface. This mechanism facilitates real-time communication across components.

Here’s a basic example of subscribing to an event:

const subscription = eventBus.subscribe({ type: "data-hover" }, () => 
  console.log("Data hovered");
});

return () => {
  subscription.unsubscribe();
};

Predefined events

The Grafana EventBus supports a variety of predefined events. Following is a list of key events and their purposes:

Event	Description
absolute-time	Triggered when a user selects an absolute time range on the dashboard
annotation-event	Fired when an annotation is created, updated, or deleted
annotation-query-finished	Occurs after an annotation query completes
annotation-query-started	Occurs when an annotation query begins
copy-panel	Initiated to copy a panel’s JSON to local storage
dashboard-loaded	Fired when a dashboard finishes loading
dashboard-saved	Triggered after a dashboard is saved
data-hover	Occurs when hovering over a legend or data point with shared crosshair enabled
data-hover-clear	Fired when the user stops hovering over a data point with shared crosshair enabled
data-select	Triggered when a user selects a data point on a panel
datasource-updated-successfully	Fired when a data source update succeeds
panel-edit-finished	Occurs when a user finishes editing a panel
panel-edit-started	Triggered when a user begins editing a panel
refresh	Fired when a dashboard is refreshed
render	Occurs when a dashboard is rendered
shift-time	Triggered when the dashboard’s time range shifts
theme-changed	Fired when the theme settings are modified
time-range-updated	Occurs when the time range is updated
variables-changed	Triggered when dashboard variable values change
variables-changed-in-url	Fired when variable values in the URL are updated
variables-time-range-process-done	Occurs when the time range processing for variables completes
zoom-out	Triggered when the user zooms out the time range

The Grafana EventBus is a powerful tool for developers looking to create dynamic, responsive plugins. By subscribing to predefined events—or even defining your own—you can build interconnected dashboards that react instantly to user actions.

Whether you’re enhancing visualizations or enabling cross-panel communication, mastering the EventBus unlocks a new level of flexibility and control in Grafana development.