PSeiGrafana: Create A Custom Notification Channel

Hey guys! Ever wanted to extend Grafana's alerting capabilities to send notifications to a super specific or custom system? Well, you're in the right place! This guide dives into creating a custom notification channel for Grafana using PSeiGrafana. We'll walk through the process step-by-step, making it easy even if you're not a Grafana plugin guru.

Understanding Grafana Notification Channels

Before we jump into the code, let's get a solid understanding of what Grafana notification channels are and why you might want to create a custom one. Think of notification channels as the messengers of Grafana's alerting system. When an alert transitions to a specific state (like firing or resolving), Grafana uses these channels to send messages to various destinations, informing you or your team about the situation.

Out of the box, Grafana supports a wide range of notification channels, including email, Slack, PagerDuty, Microsoft Teams, and many more. These built-in channels cover the most common notification scenarios. However, there are situations where you need something more tailored to your specific needs. Maybe you have an internal system that isn't directly supported, or perhaps you need to add custom logic to the notification process. That's where custom notification channels come in.

Creating a custom notification channel allows you to integrate Grafana alerts with virtually any system or service. You have full control over the format and content of the notifications, as well as the delivery mechanism. This opens up a world of possibilities for automating incident response, integrating with custom workflows, and ensuring that the right people are notified in the most effective way.

With a custom channel, you can send alerts to your own internal APIs, trigger specific actions in your infrastructure, or even create highly specialized notification formats. The flexibility of custom channels makes Grafana's alerting system incredibly powerful and adaptable to any environment. So, if you've ever felt limited by the built-in options, diving into custom notification channels is definitely the way to go.

Setting Up Your Development Environment

Alright, let's get our hands dirty and set up a development environment for creating our PSeiGrafana custom notification channel. First things first, you'll need to have a Grafana development environment set up. If you don't already have one, don't sweat it! Grafana provides a fantastic guide on how to set up a development environment using Docker. It's super straightforward, and I highly recommend following their instructions.

Once you have your Grafana development environment up and running, you'll need to install the Grafana plugin SDK. This SDK provides all the tools and libraries you need to build Grafana plugins, including notification channels. You can install the plugin SDK using npm, the Node.js package manager. If you don't have npm installed, you'll need to install Node.js first.

To install the Grafana plugin SDK, simply run the following command in your terminal:

npm install -g @grafana/toolkit

This command will install the Grafana toolkit globally, allowing you to use it to create and build your custom notification channel plugin. Once the plugin SDK is installed, you're ready to create a new plugin project. You can use the Grafana toolkit to generate a basic plugin template. This template provides a starting point for your plugin, including the necessary files and directory structure.

To create a new plugin project, run the following command in your terminal:

grafana toolkit plugin:create my-custom-notification-channel

Replace my-custom-notification-channel with the name you want to give your plugin. This command will create a new directory with the specified name, containing the basic plugin template. Navigate into the newly created directory and install the plugin dependencies by running:

npm install

With your development environment set up and your plugin project created, you're now ready to start building your custom notification channel. You can use your favorite code editor to modify the plugin files and implement the logic for your notification channel.

Building the Custom Notification Channel

Okay, let's dive into the fun part – building our custom notification channel! We'll start by defining the configuration options for our channel. These options will allow users to customize the behavior of the channel, such as specifying the API endpoint to send notifications to or setting authentication credentials.

Open the src/plugin.json file in your plugin directory. This file contains the plugin manifest, which describes the plugin to Grafana. Add a alerting section to the plugin.json file to define the configuration options for your notification channel. Here's an example of how you can define a simple configuration option for an API endpoint:

{
  "alerting": {
    "notifiers": [
      {
        "type": "my-custom-notification-channel",
        "name": "My Custom Notification Channel",
        "description": "Sends notifications to a custom API endpoint",
        "options": [
          {
            "name": "apiUrl",
            "displayName": "API Endpoint",
            "type": "text",
            "required": true,
            "description": "The URL of the API endpoint to send notifications to"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

In this example, we've defined a single configuration option called apiUrl. This option is a text field that is required and has a description. You can add more options as needed to customize your notification channel.

Next, we need to implement the logic for sending notifications. Create a new file called src/notifier.ts in your plugin directory. This file will contain the code that handles sending notifications to your custom system. In the notifier.ts file, create a class that extends the NotifierPlugin class from the @grafana/data package. This class will contain the logic for sending notifications.

Here's an example of how you can implement the send method in your notifier class:

import { NotifierPlugin, AlertResult } from '@grafana/data';

export class MyCustomNotifier extends NotifierPlugin {
  constructor(instanceSettings) {
    super(instanceSettings);
  }

  async send(options: any, alert: AlertResult) {
    const apiUrl = options.apiUrl;
    const message = `Alert ${alert.title} is in state ${alert.state}`;

    try {
      const response = await fetch(apiUrl, {
        method: 'POST',
        headers: {
          'Content-Type': 'application/json',
        },
        body: JSON.stringify({ message }),
      });

      if (!response.ok) {
        throw new Error(`Failed to send notification: ${response.status} ${response.statusText}`);
      }

      console.log('Notification sent successfully');
    } catch (error) {
      console.error('Failed to send notification:', error);
      throw error;
    }
  }
}

In this example, the send method retrieves the apiUrl from the configuration options and sends a POST request to the API endpoint with a JSON payload containing the alert message. You can customize this logic to fit your specific needs.

Finally, you need to register your custom notifier with Grafana. Open the src/module.ts file in your plugin directory. This file is the entry point for your plugin. Import your custom notifier class and register it with Grafana using the addPlugin function.

import { addPlugin } from '@grafana/data';
import { MyCustomNotifier } from './notifier';

addPlugin({ 
  notifiers: [
    {
      type: 'my-custom-notification-channel',
      component: MyCustomNotifier,
    },
  ],
});

With these steps completed, you've successfully built a custom notification channel for Grafana! Now you need to build the plugin.

Building and Testing Your Plugin

Alright, we've coded our hearts out; now it's time to build and test our shiny new Grafana plugin! Building the plugin is super easy with the Grafana toolkit. Just open your terminal, navigate to your plugin directory, and run the following command:

grafana toolkit plugin:build

This command will compile your plugin code and create a dist directory containing the plugin bundle. Once the build is complete, you can install the plugin in your Grafana instance. To install the plugin, copy the contents of the dist directory to the Grafana plugins directory. The location of the plugins directory depends on your Grafana installation. Usually it's under /var/lib/grafana/plugins or ./plugins in your Grafana root directory.

After copying the plugin files, restart your Grafana instance to load the new plugin. Once Grafana has restarted, you should see your custom notification channel listed in the notification channel settings. To test your notification channel, create a new alert rule in Grafana and configure it to send notifications to your custom channel. Make sure to provide the required configuration options, such as the API endpoint.

When the alert rule triggers, Grafana will send a notification to your custom channel. You can then check your API endpoint to see if the notification was received successfully. If you encounter any issues, check the Grafana server logs for error messages. The logs can provide valuable information for debugging your plugin.

Best Practices and Considerations

Before you deploy your custom notification channel to production, let's cover some best practices and considerations to ensure that it's reliable, secure, and maintainable. First and foremost, handle errors gracefully. Your notification channel should be able to handle errors without crashing or causing other issues. Implement proper error handling in your send method to catch exceptions and log error messages. This will help you identify and fix issues quickly.

Secure your notification channel. If your notification channel sends data to an external API, make sure to use HTTPS to encrypt the data in transit. Also, consider using authentication to protect your API endpoint from unauthorized access. You can use API keys, tokens, or other authentication mechanisms to verify the identity of the sender.

Make your notification channel configurable. Provide configuration options for all the settings that might need to be customized. This will make your notification channel more flexible and adaptable to different environments. Use clear and descriptive names for your configuration options, and provide helpful descriptions to guide users.

Test your notification channel thoroughly. Before deploying your notification channel to production, test it thoroughly with different alert rules and scenarios. Make sure that it sends notifications correctly and that it handles errors gracefully. You can use a testing framework to automate your tests and ensure that your notification channel is working as expected.

Monitor your notification channel. Once your notification channel is deployed to production, monitor it to ensure that it's working correctly. Monitor the error logs for any issues, and track the number of notifications sent and received. This will help you identify and resolve issues proactively.

By following these best practices and considerations, you can create a custom notification channel that is reliable, secure, and maintainable. This will allow you to integrate Grafana alerts with any system or service and automate your incident response process effectively.

Conclusion

And there you have it! You've successfully created a custom notification channel for Grafana using PSeiGrafana. You've learned how to set up your development environment, build the notification channel, test it thoroughly, and follow best practices to ensure its reliability and security. With this newfound knowledge, you can now integrate Grafana alerts with virtually any system or service, opening up a world of possibilities for automating your workflows and ensuring that the right people are notified at the right time.

Remember, the key to a successful custom notification channel is to understand your specific needs and tailor the channel to meet those needs. Don't be afraid to experiment and try new things. The more you practice, the better you'll become at creating custom notification channels that are perfectly suited to your environment. Now go forth and create some awesome notification channels!