How to use the selected period of time in a query?

Question

I\'m using Grafana with Prometheus and I\'d like to build a query that depends on the selected period of time selected in the upper right corner of the screen.

Is there

Answer 1

There are two ways that I know:

1. You can use the $__interval variable like this:

   increase(http_requests_total[$__interval])
   

There is a drawback that the $__interval variable's value is adjusted by resolution of the graph, but this may also be helpful in some situations.

2. This approach should fit your case better:

Go to Dashboard's Templating settings, create new variable with the type of Interval. Enable "Auto Option", adjust "Step count" to be equal 1. Then ensure that the "auto" is selected in corresponding drop-down list at the top of the dashboard.

Let's assume you name it timeRange, then the query will look like this:

increase(http_requests_total[$timeRange])

This variable will not be adjusted by graph resolution and if you select "Last 10 hours" its value will be 10h.

Answer 2

If you are looking at using prometheus as data source, $__range supports your dashboard time is great.

 increase(gin_total_requests[$__range])

Why create your variable when you can use inbuilt Global variable.

I have added links to documentations to back up my answer Grafan 5.3+