How to import Grafana dashboard with Terraform?

Question

I have multiple instances of Grafana. All instances should have the same dashboard. Therefore, I created the dashboard on one instance and exported it (see Export a dashboard). Now, I want to import the dashboard into another Grafana instance using the Grafana Provider.

I could create the dashboard on the other instance, but I couldn't open it. I get following error:

Templating

Failed to upgrade legacy queries Datasource ${DS_MYSQL} was not found

Terraform

resource "grafana_data_source" "mysql" {
  type = "mysql"
  name = "MySQL"

  url           = "localhost:3306"
  database_name = "test"
  username      = "dbuser"
  secure_json_data_encoded = jsonencode({
    password = "dbpassword"
  })
}

resource "grafana_dashboard" "metrics" {
  config_json = file("test.json")
}

Dashboard

{
  "__inputs": [
    {
      "name": "DS_MYSQL",
      "label": "MySQL",
      "description": "",
      "type": "datasource",
      "pluginId": "mysql",
      "pluginName": "MySQL"
    }
  ],
  "__elements": {},
  "__requires": [
    {
      "type": "grafana",
      "id": "grafana",
      "name": "Grafana",
      "version": "10.0.3"
    },
    {
      "type": "datasource",
      "id": "mysql",
      "name": "MySQL",
      "version": "1.0.0"
    },
    {
      "type": "panel",
      "id": "table",
      "name": "Table",
      "version": ""
    }
  ],
  "annotations": {
    "list": [
      {
        "builtIn": 1,
        "datasource": {
          "type": "grafana",
          "uid": "-- Grafana --"
        },
        "enable": true,
        "hide": true,
        "iconColor": "rgba(0, 211, 255, 1)",
        "name": "Annotations & Alerts",
        "target": {
          "limit": 100,
          "matchAny": false,
          "tags": [],
          "type": "dashboard"
        },
        "type": "dashboard"
      }
    ]
  },
  "editable": true,
  "fiscalYearStartMonth": 0,
  "graphTooltip": 0,
  "id": null,
  "links": [],
  "liveNow": false,
  "panels": [
    {
      "datasource": {
        "type": "mysql",
        "uid": "${DS_MYSQL}"
      },
      "fieldConfig": {
        "defaults": {
          "color": {
            "mode": "thresholds"
          },
          "custom": {
            "align": "auto",
            "cellOptions": {
              "type": "auto"
            },
            "inspect": false
          },
          "mappings": [],
          "thresholds": {
            "mode": "absolute",
            "steps": [
              {
                "color": "green",
                "value": null
              },
              {
                "color": "red",
                "value": 80
              }
            ]
          }
        },
        "overrides": []
      },
      "gridPos": {
        "h": 8,
        "w": 12,
        "x": 0,
        "y": 0
      },
      "id": 1,
      "options": {
        "cellHeight": "sm",
        "footer": {
          "countRows": false,
          "fields": "",
          "reducer": [
            "sum"
          ],
          "show": false
        },
        "showHeader": true
      },
      "pluginVersion": "10.0.3",
      "targets": [
        {
          "dataset": "test",
          "datasource": {
            "type": "mysql",
            "uid": "${DS_MYSQL}"
          },
          "editorMode": "builder",
          "format": "table",
          "rawSql": "SELECT id FROM test.issue LIMIT 50 ",
          "refId": "A",
          "sql": {
            "columns": [
              {
                "parameters": [
                  {
                    "name": "id",
                    "type": "functionParameter"
                  }
                ],
                "type": "function"
              }
            ],
            "groupBy": [],
            "limit": 50
          },
          "table": "issue"
        }
      ],
      "title": "Panel Title",
      "type": "table"
    }
  ],
  "refresh": "",
  "schemaVersion": 38,
  "style": "dark",
  "tags": [],
  "templating": {
    "list": []
  },
  "time": {
    "from": "now-6h",
    "to": "now"
  },
  "timepicker": {},
  "timezone": "",
  "title": "DUR Test",
  "uid": "ff8f4277-eb0b-46ee-abbf-3b668e9bd3a5",
  "version": 2,
  "weekStart": ""
}

Research

• I read Managing Grafana Dashboards With Terraform, but there is nothing written about data sources.

• I read Creating and managing a Grafana Cloud stack using Terraform, but there is no example of dashboard JSON source code.

• I read [Bug] Cannot import data sources from __input field, but there is no automated solution. I don't want to change all dashboards in all instance manually.

Question

How to import a dashboard into multiple Grafana instances with Terraform?

Answer 1

1.) It looks like your test.json was exporter with Export for sharing externally enabled = it has input variable, where user will select in the UI which datasource will be used. But you are not working with UI, so don't export it with this option.

2.) You will export dashboard with Export for sharing externally disabled - now dashboard will have hardcoded datasources uid, e.g.:

         "datasource": {
            "type": "mysql",
            "uid": "<random-hardcoded-string>"
          },

But that uid can be changed each time you provision datasource. So it is good idea to predefine uid in the datasource resource, e.g.

resource "grafana_data_source" "mysql" {
  uid  = "my-mysql"
  type = "mysql"
  name = "MySQL"
...

Now you can destroy and recreate and datasource will have still the same uid - it can be hardcoded in the test.json.

More advance option will be to use string function to replace all old datasource uid values in test.json by current resource.grafana_data_source.mysql.uid.