How to importing an external JavaScript lib

Developing Plugins i want to import an external JavaScript lib ( techan.js)

npm install teachan --save
npm install d3 --save
and adding code in rendering.js:
import * as d3 from ‘d3’;
import techan from ‘./libs/techan’

but I got this…
Screenshot from 2017-07-26 13-38-28

D3 is already included in Grafana 4.x

To include lib just place it along side your code and import it using import statement or systemjs.

1 Like

Just adding a note here. npm install installs the d3 code into the node_modules directory. That is not available to your plugin. It will only be available to the build tools (grunt or similar). You have to copy the js file from your node_modules into the src directory of your plugin.

I’ve just had a similar issue. d3-scale-chromatic is no longer part of d3 and I had to copy and paste its source in order to make it work in my plugin. I don’t think this is a very good solution.

You mention that “npm installs d3 code into the node_modules directory”. Do you mean core grafana node_modules directory or the plugins directory?

I’ve installed the d3-scale-chromatic into plugin’s node_modules but wasn’t able to import it - grafana tries to load it from public directory (http://grafana.staged-by-discourse.com/public/d3-scale-chromatic). Is there some way to make it load from the plugin’s node_modules directory? And if not, have you thought about implementing it? I think it would help to achieve much cleaner solution in case when plugin needs to use an external library.
Thanks for reply.

Hey.

For this problem I created https://github.com/CorpGlory/grafana-plugin-template-webpack where you can get one bundle with your libs using npm and webpack

For external JS libs, you currently have to include them in the plugin. Here is an example: https://github.com/grafana/worldmap-panel/blob/master/src/worldmap.js#L3

One follow-up question,

In my plugin, I import d3 (v3) lib as @daniellee mentioned but it starts giving an issue when another plugin on same dashboard loads a different version of d3.

On plugin initialization, it uses the correct version of ‘d3.js’ library as mentioned in code but on a different workflow when data is received, plugin starts using different version of d3 (loaded by different plugin).

For e.g. Bubble-chart plugin imports d3 library
like: https://github.com/digrich/bubblechart-panel/blob/b8194655f84ab3a3528244fdcebd75f7c86cab4e/src/bubble_ctrl.js#L2 but it starts getting a conflict with ‘Diagram’ plugin d3 library (older version) and starts breaking my code.

If you are using d3 then you do not need to include it in your code. It is already loaded by Grafana - see list of exposed components here:

@daniellee Old topic, but did not find anything newer. How one can import a different version of the component than the one included in the list of exposed components by Grafana?

I have a problem of importing d3 too. Currently Grafana exposes d3 v4, I would like to use d3 v5. I suppose the same problem would be with other exposed components too.

I am using grafana-toolkit for building the plugin.

@samiru, in your package.json you’ll see a dependency to "@grafana/ui": "next". If you want to use an older version of the component library, try downgrading that dependency. Here you’ll find all the grafana-ui releases.

Ok. This is how I ended up resolving this, not sure if this is unorthodox or not. Feels a bit clumsy and I feel like the plugins should have access to their own dependencies (defined in package.json) without any tricks.

I created ‘externals’ directory into plugin root and copied everything related to d3 into this folder. To get typing to work, I copied /node_modules/@types/d3/index.d.ts to /externals/d3/index.d.ts. ).

After this, I could use a relative import in my source to get access to d3 version I wanted: import * as d3 from ‘…/…/…/externals/d3’;

That’s it.