Filesystem access for grafana cloud

Grafana Cloud
1

What Grafana version and what operating system are you using?

Grafana cloud - latest version - latest Google Chrome on latest macOS

What are you trying to achieve?

Load a custom GeoJSON file into a Geomap panel to show U.S. counties on a map.

How are you trying to achieve it? and What happened?
The Grafana Geomap ships with two sample geojson files (/public/maps/countries.geojson and /public/maps/usa-states.geojson). Documentation states that you can provide your own URL to other geojson files.

I first tried to find the /public folder, but since this is Grafana cloud I don’t know where to look and I’ve not been able to find anything online or in Grafana docs after extensive searching.

Instead, I tried hosting the geojson file on an external web location, but the geomap panel doesn’t react or load the file.

Next, I tried seeing if something was wrong with my file by installing a local test instance of Grafana on my Mac, loading my file into the public/maps folder as per the instructions, and it worked perfectly.

So that leads me to two conclusions to what’s necessary to solve the problem. I either need to be able to:

  • load geojson files into the geomap panel via external url OR
  • gain access to the filesystem for Grafana Cloud so I can put the file in the /public/maps folder.

What did you expect to happen?
I expected that either my external URL for the geojson file hosted elsewhere would work or to be able to locate the /public folder for my Grafana cloud instance.

Did you follow any online instructions? If so, what is the URL?

I’m following the documentation for the geomap panel at:

which says GeoJSON URL provides a choice of GeoJSON files that ship with Grafana.

Any guidance that you all could provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

1 Like
2

Hi @nathanoday ! It looks like our documentation is not clear for using this panel visualization in Grafana Cloud environments. Grafana Cloud users do not have access to modify the /public/maps path for the “loaded” GeoJSON maps available.

I found that you should be able to use your own URL though. I grabbed a couple of example URLs from geojson.xyz to test:

No custom map selected:

geomap1
geomap11920Ă—981 84.5 KB

Using the map named “admin 1 states provinces shp:”

geomap2
geomap21920Ă—973 76.3 KB

Using map named “rivers lake centerlines scale rank:”

geomap3
geomap31920Ă—966 90.9 KB

The downside is that for frequently used custom GeoJSON maps, they do not stay populated as a dropdown option. I’ll create a feature request for this, and also let our UI/UX team know the navigation and panel setting descriptions could use some attention. It was not immediately clear to me that just pasting a URL in there would work! If you haven’t already tried that, please give it a shot. Also be sure that the external web location you’re using provides sufficient permissions to access that content.

Also, the local Grafana server you installed is entirely separate from the Grafana Cloud instance. Changes made to a Grafana OSS configuration will not have any influence on your hosted Grafana instance.

1 Like
3

Hi @Melody! Thanks for your helpful response. Good to know about the filesystem access. I knew that changes made in my local instance wouldn’t affect the cloud instance, I was just trying to see if my file was structured incorrectly by locating the default geojson files that ship with Grafana.

I can see with your example URLs that they do work in the panel, but for some reason pasting my link doesn’t work; nothing is showing up when I do. To my knowledge there are no security issues or other factors that should be keeping the file from working, but so far no luck.

Here’s my file URL. Any thoughts?

https://www.letu.edu/offices/umc/grafana-files/us_counties_2010_5m.geojson

4

I used infinity plugin with inline geojson data. Using uql to extract data pieces.

but not sure what part of the geojson data grafana needs
Feature
Geometry

@yesoreyeram any idea?

This is what I get using either inline data or url based fetch

image
image1247Ă—637 47.3 KB

5

use orchestra cities map with infinity plugin and it works

image
image1677Ă—851 220 KB

6

Rivers

image
image1624Ă—748 158 KB

7

Thanks a ton @yosiasz! I appreciate the help. I was able to get the orchestra cities map panel to pull the data using the JSON API right as you were sending that. It just needed to query the geometries elements in the JSON. So my external URL is being loaded as a data source to the Orchestra Cities Map panel instead of as a file to the stock map panel.

The orchestra cities map panel has some interesting customization options for the tooltip pop ups, but I’m noticing some limitations in other areas.

  • Do you know if the stroke width can be reduced in the orchestra cities map panel? all the boundaries for geoJSON polygons look super heavy and overlap when zoomed out, compared to the stock map panel.
  • Do you know if tooltip pop-ups can be turned off for specific layers on the orchestra cities map panel? I’m going to add a layer for pins pointing out specific locations on top of the county map background, and that is the only layer I want to have tool tip pop ups.

Thanks @yosiasz and @Melody for your great suggestions.

1 Like
8

I would post these questions to their github repo.

This plugin’s feature of selecting the Geometry data node is missing in the geomap plugin.

Also how reasonable is it to display the whole usa. Is that really a requirement?

The other thing also is file level data worries me why is this data not in a real gis enabled database?

9

I agree, the main geomap panel only wants to accept a URL or JSON file; you can’t choose what to target inside the file like you can with this orchestra cities plugin. I’ll repost these other two questions to their github, good call. Thanks!

10

Sorry added the above right as you posted

11

My use case is a little unorthodox. I’m a marketing professional creating a full USA map for market research. We’re going to color code counties for different categorization purposes in identifying new markets, hence needing the country-level overview. And the reason my geoJSON data is coming from a static file is because I don’t need the additional functionality of a gis database, just a static overlay of color-coded counties.

Also, for reference, here is a link to the issue referenced in the thread above. Looks like others have already identified the stroke width issue:

https://github.com/orchestracities/map-panel/issues/95

1 Like
12

just be aware performance will be atrocious: 5MB file across the wire
Maybe see if you could break it down by state or regions, or some other research categorization?

13

I am trying to use custom geojson files as well but I am using amazon managed grafana. How would I go about troubleshooting the geojson not loading?