1.6 KiB
+++ title = "Live Channel" description = "Grafana Live channel guide" keywords = ["Grafana", "live", "guide", "channel"] weight = 110 +++
Grafana Live Channel guide
Grafana Live is a PUB/SUB server, clients subscribe to channels to receive real-time updates published to those channels.
Channel structure
Channel is a string identifier. In Grafana channel consists of 3 parts delimited by /:
- Scope
- Namespace
- Path
For example, the channel grafana/dashboard/xyz has the scope grafana, namespace dashboard, and path xyz.
Scope, namespace and path can only have ASCII alphanumeric symbols (A-Z, a-z, 0-9), _ (underscore) and - (dash) at the moment. The path part can additionally have /, . and = symbols. The meaning of scope, namespace and path is context-specific.
The maximum length of a channel is 160 symbols.
Scope determines the purpose of a channel in Grafana. For example, for data source plugin channels Grafana uses ds scope. For built-in features like dashboard edit notifications Grafana uses grafana scope.
Namespace has a different meaning depending on scope. For example, for grafana scope this could be a name of built-in real-time feature like dashboard (i.e. dashboards events).
The path, which is the final part of a channel, usually contains the identifier of some concrete resource such as the ID of a dashboard that a user is currently looking at. But a path can be anything.
Channels are lightweight and ephemeral - they are created automatically on user subscription and removed as soon as last user left a channel.
Data format
All data travelling over Live channels must be JSON-encoded.