Note: connecting Marple to an InfluxDB database is currently in beta. Contact support@marpledata.com if you encounter any problems using it. ⚠️ Only InfluxDB v2 is supported.
Contents
The documentation below is structured in three parts
- Set up (only first time)
- Selecting data (finding the right data)
- Visualising selections (making plots)
Note: some more advanced Marple features are not yet available for InfluxDB data. We'll be adding them in future releases.
1. Set up
Preparing your Influx database
To get started with InfluxDB, you will need the three credentials:
- URL: the web link, like http://influx.mycompany.com
- Token: a connection token which looks like a long random string
- Organisation: the organisation where your data belongs to
If you have an IT department you might need to ask them. If you have access to the InfluxDB web application, you can obtain these credentials yourself with the steps below.
If you don't like to read, here's a video that covers this "1. Set up" part.
1. URL
The URL can be read from your browser bar. Be sure to only include the part before the first slash ("/"). Some examples of valid URL's:
- http://influx.mycompany.com
- http://influx.mycompany.com:8086
- http://ec2-3-66-214-234.eu-central-1.compute.amazonaws.com:8086
Often the URL will include the port 8086. Make sure to include it (and the colon ":")
⚠️ Important: make sure that the URL is accesible from outside your company network/VPN. You can try this by accessing the URL using your phone on cellular network. If this is not the case, you will need the help of IT to set up port forwarding.
2. Token
Use the load data menu to access the "API tokens" section.
You can choose to reuse an existing token (A) or to generate a new token (B).
The most secure option is to create a new token:
- Click "Generate api token" and choose "Read/Write API Token"
- Enter "Marple" as the description
- Select what buckets you want Marple to be able to access (or select "all buckets")
- Save the token
- Click the token to open it
- Copy the value to the clipboard, you'll need it to set up Marple
3. Organisation
The organisation can be found in the about section.
Making the connection
Create a new InfluxDB connection in the data library.
Enter the credentials (URL, token, organisation) obtained from the InfluxDB application or your IT administrator. You can choose an easy to remember name for this connection.
Click "Test Connection" to check if the credentials work. If all is well, save the connection.
2. Selecting data
What is a selection?
Influx databases can contain a lot of data. Often, you only want to visualise a small part of that at once. A selection lets you choose a small part of the data.
You can think of selections as files. They appear in the library and are shared with your team members. They can also have metadata.
Creating a selection
Create a new selection by pressing one of the two buttons in the library. Make sure you have the Influx database selected that you want to use.
In the following window, you can configure the new dataset:
- Setting time range: pick this as narrow as possible for a nice result
- Data preview: this shows how the data is distributed in the time range
- Filter on tags: narrow down by selecting a bucket and specific tags
Hint: visualisations will have the best result when you narrow down by selecting enough tags. If you leave the tag filtering open, your selection can contain multiple datasets layered on top of each other.
Editing selections
You can modify a selection after you created it. Click the three dots, and click "Edit".
3. Visualising selections
To visualise InfluxdB data, you need a selection (see section above). Once that is done, visualising selections works the same as you would with files:
- Click the checkbox (or double click the selection)
- Click "Visualise"
Once in the visualisation tab, you unlock the same Marple features as for files. You can drag signals to plot them, create share links, etc. See the analysis documentation for more information.
