Infludb

[dcolosse]

Hi,

Why I can't open Influxdb in the navigator ??

Best

[Paraphraser]

What "navigator"? Can you please explain what you are trying to do.

[dcolosse]

Hello,

InfluxDB works correctly from the command line (Raspberry Pi 5). However, when I enter localhost:8086, I can't access the web interface with Firefox. I'm a beginner.

[Paraphraser]

OK. I understand. The word "navigator" threw me. Sorry.

Can I ask you to please read some words about influxdb because it will save me retyping that material.

InfluxDB 1.x does use the HTTP protocol on port 8086 but only for query processing. It does not have a web interface.

InfluxDB 2.x does have a web interface but, for the reasons given in the link above, it is not a good idea to use that version because you'll wind up stuck in a technological back alley.

If you're wondering about InfluxDB 3.x, IOTstack does not support that. If any of this is true, it seems highly unlikely that 3.x will ever be a candidate for inclusion in IOTstack.

So, basically, if you want InfluxDB it's version 1.x or nothing and you don't get a GUI.

Please don't misunderstand that last paragraph. InfluxDB 1.x is extremely capable. It is highly reliable and just works. I strongly recommend it for the storage of time-series data.

The way you control InfluxDB 1.x is via environment variables in the service definition (that's the section of your docker-compose.yml which tells docker compose that you want to run the InfluxDB container).

If you want to interact with the InfluxDB 1.x database engine to inspect databases etc, you do it from the command line using the InfluxQL query language. If you built your system using PiBuilder then IOTstackAliases will already be installed, otherwise you can follow the instructions to download and install it yourself. One of the aliases provided by IOTstackAliases is:

alias influx='docker exec -it influxdb influx -precision=rfc3339'

You said you were a beginner so I'll explain. With that alias defined, just typing:

influx

will connect you to the database engine. The influx alias is the same as typing the full command inside the single quotes, which breaks down to:

• docker: run the docker command
• exec: indicates that a command is going to be executed inside a named container
• -it: connect standard input and output
• influxdb: the named container
• influx: the command to run inside the container
• -precision=rfc3339: a flag to pass to the influx command which has the effect of displaying human-readable timestamps rather than integer nanoseconds since 1/1/1970.

The -it means your terminal session is connected to the influx command running inside the container until you indicate you are done by pressing control+d (or typing the "exit" command).

If you want to write time-series data to an Influx database, go back to the first link above and start at the top of the gist because it explains how to use Node-RED to pull data out of MQTT feeds and pump it into InfluxDB. That gist also has some examples of how to use InfluxQL.

If you want to visualise time-series data, that's that Grafana is for. Grafana does have a web GUI and it can connect directly to InfluxDB 1.x. You can build queries using point-and-click.

I hope this helps explain all the moving parts, and answers your question.