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This tutorial walks you through the fundamental of creating line protocol data and writing it to InfluxDB.

InfluxDB provides many different options for ingesting or writing data, including the following:

  • Influx user interface (UI)
  • InfluxDB HTTP API (v1 and v2)
  • Telegraf
  • influx3 data CLI
  • InfluxDB client libraries
  • influx CLI

If using tools like Telegraf or InfluxDB client libraries, they can build the line protocol for you, but it’s good to understand how line protocol works.

Line protocol

All data written to InfluxDB is written using line protocol, a text-based format that lets you provide the necessary information to write a data point to InfluxDB. This tutorial covers the basics of line protocol, but for detailed information, see the Line protocol reference.

Line protocol elements

Each line of line protocol contains the following elements:

* Required
  • * measurement: String that identifies the measurement to store the data in.
  • tag set: Comma-delimited list of key value pairs, each representing a tag. Tag keys and values are unquoted strings. Spaces, commas, and equal characters must be escaped.
  • * field set: Comma-delimited list of key value pairs, each representing a field. Field keys are unquoted strings. Spaces and commas must be escaped. Field values can be strings (quoted), floats, integers, unsigned integers, or booleans.
  • timestamp: Unix timestamp associated with the data. InfluxDB supports up to nanosecond precision. If the precision of the timestamp is not in nanoseconds, you must specify the precision when writing the data to InfluxDB.

Line protocol element parsing

  • measurement: Everything before the first unescaped comma before the first whitespace.
  • tag set: Key-value pairs between the first unescaped comma and the first unescaped whitespace.
  • field set: Key-value pairs between the first and second unescaped whitespaces.
  • timestamp: Integer value after the second unescaped whitespace.
  • Lines are separated by the newline character (\n). Line protocol is whitespace sensitive.

myMeasurement,tag1=val1,tag2=val2 field1="v1",field2=1i 0000000000000000000

For schema design recommendations, see InfluxDB schema design.

Construct line protocol

With a basic understanding of line protocol, you can now construct line protocol and write data to InfluxDB. Consider a use case where you collect data from sensors in your home. Each sensor collects temperature, humidity, and carbon monoxide readings. To collect this data, use the following schema:

  • measurement: home
    • tags
      • room: Living Room or Kitchen
    • fields
      • temp: temperature in °C (float)
      • hum: percent humidity (float)
      • co: carbon monoxide in parts per million (integer)
    • timestamp: Unix timestamp in second precision

The following line protocol sample represents data collected hourly beginning at 2025-04-30T08:00:00Z (UTC) until 2025-04-30T20:00:00Z (UTC).

Home sensor data line protocol
home,room=Living\ Room temp=21.1,hum=35.9,co=0i 1719924000
home,room=Kitchen temp=21.0,hum=35.9,co=0i 1719924000
home,room=Living\ Room temp=21.4,hum=35.9,co=0i 1719927600
home,room=Kitchen temp=23.0,hum=36.2,co=0i 1719927600
home,room=Living\ Room temp=21.8,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719931200
home,room=Kitchen temp=22.7,hum=36.1,co=0i 1719931200
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.2,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719934800
home,room=Kitchen temp=22.4,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719934800
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.2,hum=35.9,co=0i 1719938400
home,room=Kitchen temp=22.5,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719938400
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.4,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719942000
home,room=Kitchen temp=22.8,hum=36.5,co=1i 1719942000
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.3,hum=36.1,co=0i 1719945600
home,room=Kitchen temp=22.8,hum=36.3,co=1i 1719945600
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.3,hum=36.1,co=1i 1719949200
home,room=Kitchen temp=22.7,hum=36.2,co=3i 1719949200
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.4,hum=36.0,co=4i 1719952800
home,room=Kitchen temp=22.4,hum=36.0,co=7i 1719952800
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.6,hum=35.9,co=5i 1719956400
home,room=Kitchen temp=22.7,hum=36.0,co=9i 1719956400
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.8,hum=36.2,co=9i 1719960000
home,room=Kitchen temp=23.3,hum=36.9,co=18i 1719960000
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.5,hum=36.3,co=14i 1719963600
home,room=Kitchen temp=23.1,hum=36.6,co=22i 1719963600
home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.2,hum=36.4,co=17i 1719967200
home,room=Kitchen temp=22.7,hum=36.5,co=26i 1719967200
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Write line protocol to InfluxDB

The following examples show how to write the preceding sample data, already in line protocol format, to an InfluxDB Cloud Serverless bucket.

To learn more about available tools and options, see Write data.

Some examples in this getting started tutorial assume your InfluxDB credentials (URL, organization, and token) are provided by environment variables.

InfluxDB UI influx CLI Telegraf v1 API v2 API Python Go Node.js C# Java

To write data to InfluxDB Cloud Serverless using Go, use the InfluxDB 3 influxdb3-go client library package.

  1. Inside of your project directory, create a new module directory and navigate into it.

    mkdir -p influxdb_go_client && cd influxdb_go_client
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  2. Initialize a new Go module in the directory.

    go mod init influxdb_go_client
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  3. In your terminal or editor, create a new file for your code–for example: write.go.

    touch write.go
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  4. Inside of write.go, enter the following sample code:

    package main

import (
  "context"
  "os"
  "fmt"
  "log"

  "github.com/InfluxCommunity/influxdb3-go/v2/influxdb3"
)

// Write line protocol data to InfluxDB
func WriteLineProtocol() error {
  // INFLUX_TOKEN is an environment variable you assigned to your
  // API WRITE token value.
  token := os.Getenv("INFLUX_TOKEN")
  database := os.Getenv("INFLUX_DATABASE")

  // Initialize a client with URL and token,
  // and set the timestamp precision for writes.
  client, err := influxdb3.New(influxdb3.ClientConfig{
    Host:     "https://cloud2.influxdata.com",
    Token:    token,
    Database: database,
      WriteOptions: &influxdb3.WriteOptions{Precision: lineprotocol.Second},
  })

  // Close the client when the function returns.
  defer func(client *influxdb3.Client) {
    err := client.Close()
    if err != nil {
      panic(err)
    }
  }(client)

  // Define line protocol records to write.
  // Use a raw string literal (denoted by backticks)
  // to preserve backslashes and prevent interpretation
  // of escape sequences--for example, escaped spaces in tag values.
  lines := [...]string{
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=21.1,hum=35.9,co=0i 1719124000`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=21.0,hum=35.9,co=0i 1719124000`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=21.4,hum=35.9,co=0i 1719127600`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=23.0,hum=36.2,co=0i 1719127600`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=21.8,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719131200`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=22.7,hum=36.1,co=0i 1719131200`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.2,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719134800`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=22.4,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719134800`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.2,hum=35.9,co=0i 1719138400`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=22.5,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719138400`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.4,hum=36.0,co=0i 1719142000`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=22.8,hum=36.5,co=1i 1719142000`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.3,hum=36.1,co=0i 1719145600`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=22.8,hum=36.3,co=1i 1719145600`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.3,hum=36.1,co=1i 1719149200`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=22.7,hum=36.2,co=3i 1719149200`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.4,hum=36.0,co=4i 1719152800`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=22.4,hum=36.0,co=7i 1719152800`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.6,hum=35.9,co=5i 1719156400`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=22.7,hum=36.0,co=9i 1719156400`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.8,hum=36.2,co=9i 1719160000`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=23.3,hum=36.9,co=18i 1719160000`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.5,hum=36.3,co=14i 1719163600`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=23.1,hum=36.6,co=22i 1719163600`,
    `home,room=Living\ Room temp=22.2,hum=36.4,co=17i 1719167200`,
    `home,room=Kitchen temp=22.7,hum=36.5,co=26i 1719167200`,
  }

  // Iterate over the lines array and write each line
  // separately to InfluxDB
  for _, record := range lines {
    err = client.Write(context.Background(), []byte(record))
    if err != nil {
      log.Fatalf("Error writing line protocol: %v", err)
    }
  }

  if err != nil {
    panic(err)
  }

  fmt.Println("Data has been written successfully.")
  return nil
}
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    The sample does the following:

    1. Imports required packages.

    2. Defines a WriteLineProtocol() function that does the following:

      1. To instantiate the client, calls the influxdb3.New(influxdb3.ClientConfig) function and passes the following:

        • Host: your InfluxDB Cloud Serverless region URL

        • Token: a token with write access to the specified bucket. Store this in a secret store or environment variable to avoid exposing the raw token string.

        • WriteOptions: influxdb3.WriteOptions options for writing to InfluxDB.

          Because the timestamps in the sample line protocol are in second precision, the example passes the Precision: lineprotocol.Second option to set the timestamp precision to seconds.

      2. Defines a deferred function that closes the client when the function returns.

      3. Defines an array of line protocol strings where each string represents a data record.

      4. Iterates through the array of line protocol and calls the write client’s Write() method to write each line of line protocol separately to InfluxDB.

  5. In your editor, create a main.go file and enter the following sample code that calls the WriteLineProtocol() function:

    package main

// Module main function
func main() {
  WriteLineProtocol()
}
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  6. To install dependencies and write the data to your InfluxDB Cloud Serverless bucket, enter the following command into your terminal:

    go mod tidy && go run influxdb_go_client
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If successful, the output is the success message; otherwise, error details and the failure message.

View the written data

Congratulations! You have written data to InfluxDB. With data now stored in InfluxDB, let’s query it.

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