grafana_dashboard recource is not idempotent

[karolisc]

How to reproduce (e.g Puppet code you use)

grafana_dashboard { 'example_dashboard':
  grafana_url       => 'https://127.0.0.1:3000',
  grafana_user      => 'admin',
  grafana_password  => '5ecretPassw0rd',
  content           => template('path/to/exported/file.json'),
}

run  multiple times:
puppet agent -t

What are you seeing

...... content: content changed '{"annotation...' to '{"annotation...'

Karolis

[ov7a]

Also, one can get

Error: Could not set 'present' on ensure: Fail to save dashboard example_dashboard (HTTP response: 412/{"message":"A dashboard with the same name already exists","status":"name-exists"} 

[ofbeaton]

I fixed this in grafana 5.x by switching to dashboard provisioning instead of the puppet type that uses the API.

http://docs.grafana.org/administration/provisioning/

In fact I had to switch from dashboard types to provisioning as I had all kinds of problems using the API including this one (dashboards titles not being found despite them being installed, resulting in errors, dashboards being continuously deployed as they are not idempotent ...). Switching to provisioning solved all my problems.

May we should update the documentation for this alternative?

[aptituz]

I wonder how viable the solution to use the file provisioning is, because it makes it almost impossible to implement additional resources, e.g. resources for granting dashboard permissions to users and teams without requiring multiple puppet runs.

Couldn't the provider be fixed to properly compare is/should?

[joernott]

This should be resolved. When exporting a JSON file, you need to delete the "id", "uid" and "version" elements from that. The sanitized template should work.
From grafana 9 on, the datasources are no longer referenced by name but by uuid, so you need to set it when creating a datasource and then reference its id in your dashboard (happens automagically, when your dashboard uses a datasource created by puppet).