Announcing Chronograf 0.10 Release Candidate w/ Template Variables

By Will Faurot / Product
Jan 27, 2016

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We’re hard at work on 0.10.0, Chronograf’s next major release. Plenty of new features and improvements are in store, and we wanted to give a quick preview of our take on an oft-requested feature: template variables.

Keep in mind that 0.10.0-rc1 still has some rough edges as we move towards the final 0.10.0 release and shouldn’t be relied on in production.

Template Variables

Template variables allow you to apply a value across multiple queries. 0.10.0-rc1 introduces support for templated time ranges and tags via the tmplTime() and tmplTagValue() functions.

Time ranges

Use the tmplTime() function to apply the globally selected time range to a particular query. This works for queries that use the query builder as well as queries entered manually:

Tags

Using template variables for tags prevents you from having to duplicate groups of visualizations across dashboards. Say you were running an application on multiple hosts and had a dashboard to monitor system metrics (cpu, memory, etc.). Instead of configuring a dashboard for each host via an API or by hand (neither option being ideal), you could use a template variable for the tag keyhost. Simply head to the query builder, select a tag key, and choose the ‘Make Variable’ option to turn that tag pair into a templated variable:

tmpltag

What's next?

  • Download the code and get started with [this RC](**placeholder for RC download link**) or with the current stable version
  • Need help getting started? Check out the Chronograf docs and getting started tutorial.