Get started with InfluxDB OSS
This page documents an earlier version of InfluxDB OSS. InfluxDB 3 Core is the latest stable version.
With InfluxDB open source (OSS) installed, you’re ready to start working with time series data.
This guide uses the influx
command line interface (CLI), which is included with InfluxDB
and provides direct access to the database.
The CLI communicates with InfluxDB through the HTTP API on port 8086
.
Docker users: Access the CLI from your container using:
docker exec -it <container-name> influx
Directly access the API
You can also interact with InfluxDB using the HTTP API directly.
See Writing Data and Querying Data for examples using curl
.
Creating a database
After installing InfluxDB locally, the influx
command is available from your terminal.
Running influx
starts the CLI and connects to your local InfluxDB instance
(ensure InfluxDB is running with service influxdb start
or influxd
).
To start the CLI and connect to the local InfluxDB instance, run the following command.
The -precision
argument specifies the format and precision of any returned timestamps.
$ influx -precision rfc3339
Connected to http://localhost:8086 version 1.11.8
InfluxDB shell 1.11.8
>
The influx
CLI connects to port localhost:8086
(the default).
The timestamp precision rfc3339
tells InfluxDB to return timestamps in RFC3339 format (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.nnnnnnnnnZ
).
To view available options for customizing CLI connection parameters or other settings, run influx --help
in your terminal.
The command line is ready to take input in the form of the Influx Query Language (InfluxQL) statements.
To exit the InfluxQL shell, type exit
and hit return.
A fresh install of InfluxDB has no databases (apart from the system _internal
),
so creating one is our first task.
You can create a database with the CREATE DATABASE <db-name>
InfluxQL statement,
where <db-name>
is the name of the database you wish to create.
Names of databases can contain any unicode character as long as the string is double-quoted.
Names can also be left unquoted if they contain only ASCII letters,
digits, or underscores and do not begin with a digit.
Throughout this guide, we’ll use the database name mydb
:
> CREATE DATABASE mydb
>
Note: After hitting enter, a new prompt appears and nothing else is displayed. In the CLI, this means the statement was executed and there were no errors to display. There will always be an error displayed if something went wrong.
Now that the mydb
database is created, we’ll use the SHOW DATABASES
statement
to display all existing databases:
> SHOW DATABASES
name: databases
name
----
_internal
mydb
>
Note: The
_internal
database is created and used by InfluxDB to store internal runtime metrics. Check it out later to get an interesting look at how InfluxDB is performing under the hood.
Unlike SHOW DATABASES
, most InfluxQL statements must operate against a specific database.
You may explicitly name the database with each query,
but the CLI provides a convenience statement, USE <db-name>
,
which will automatically set the database for all future requests. For example:
> USE mydb
Using database mydb
>
Now future commands will only be run against the mydb
database.
Writing and exploring data
Now that we have a database, InfluxDB is ready to accept queries and writes.
First, a short primer on the datastore.
Data in InfluxDB is organized by “time series”,
which contain a measured value, like “cpu_load” or “temperature”.
Time series have zero to many points
, one for each discrete sample of the metric.
Points consist of time
(a timestamp), a measurement
(“cpu_load”, for example),
at least one key-value field
(the measured value itself, e.g.
“value=0.64”, or “temperature=21.2”), and zero to many key-value tags
containing any metadata about the value (e.g.
“host=server01”, “region=EMEA”, “dc=Frankfurt”).
Conceptually you can think of a measurement
as an SQL table,
where the primary index is always time.
tags
and fields
are effectively columns in the table.
tags
are indexed, and fields
are not.
The difference is that, with InfluxDB, you can have millions of measurements,
you don’t have to define schemas up-front, and null values aren’t stored.
Points are written to InfluxDB using the InfluxDB line protocol, which follows the following format:
<measurement>[,<tag-key>=<tag-value>...] <field-key>=<field-value>[,<field2-key>=<field2-value>...] [unix-nano-timestamp]
The following lines are all examples of points that can be written to InfluxDB:
cpu,host=serverA,region=us_west value=0.64
payment,device=mobile,product=Notepad,method=credit billed=33,licenses=3i 1434067467100293230
stock,symbol=AAPL bid=127.46,ask=127.48
temperature,machine=unit42,type=assembly external=25,internal=37 1434067467000000000
Note: For details on the InfluxDB line protocol, see InfluxDB line protocol syntax page.
To insert a single time series data point into InfluxDB using the CLI, enter INSERT
followed by a point:
> INSERT cpu,host=serverA,region=us_west value=0.64
>
A point with the measurement name of cpu
and tags host
and region
has now been written to the database, with the measured value
of 0.64
.
Now we will query for the data we just wrote:
> SELECT "host", "region", "value" FROM "cpu"
name: cpu
---------
time host region value
2015-10-21T19:28:07.580664347Z serverA us_west 0.64
>
Note: We did not supply a timestamp when writing our point. When no timestamp is supplied for a point, InfluxDB assigns the local current timestamp when the point is ingested. That means your timestamp will be different.
Let’s try storing another type of data, with two fields in the same measurement:
> INSERT temperature,machine=unit42,type=assembly external=25,internal=37
>
To return all fields and tags with a query, you can use the *
operator:
> SELECT * FROM "temperature"
name: temperature
-----------------
time external internal machine type
2015-10-21T19:28:08.385013942Z 25 37 unit42 assembly
>
Warning: Using *
without a LIMIT
clause on a large database can cause performance issues.
You can use Ctrl+C
to cancel a query that is taking too long to respond.
InfluxQL has many features and keywords that are not covered here, including support for Go-style regex. For example:
> SELECT * FROM /.*/ LIMIT 1
--
> SELECT * FROM "cpu_load_short"
--
> SELECT * FROM "cpu_load_short" WHERE "value" > 0.9
Using the HTTP API
You can also interact with InfluxDB using HTTP requests with tools like curl
:
Create a database
Write data
curl -i -XPOST 'http://localhost:8086/write?db=mydb' \
--data-binary 'cpu,host=serverA,region=us_west value=0.64'
Query data
curl -G 'http://localhost:8086/query?pretty=true' \
--data-urlencode "db=mydb" \
--data-urlencode "q=SELECT * FROM cpu"
Next steps
This is all you need to know to write data into InfluxDB and query it back. To learn more about the InfluxDB write protocol, check out the guide on Writing Data. To further explore the query language, check out the guide on Querying Data. For more information on InfluxDB concepts, check out the Key Concepts page.
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Customers with an annual or support contract can contact InfluxData Support. Customers using a trial license can email trial@influxdata.com for assistance.