dashboard export

Purpose

Export dashboards to raw/, prompt/, and provisioning/ files, with optional history/ artifacts.

When to use

Use this when you need a local export tree for later import, review, diff, or file-provisioning workflows. Add --include-history when you also need dashboard revision-history artifacts under each exported org scope. The prompt/ lane is for Grafana UI import, not dashboard API import; use dashboard raw-to-prompt when you need to convert ordinary or raw dashboard JSON into prompt JSON.

Before / After

• Before: export is a one-off action, and you only discover later whether the tree is reviewable or reusable.
• After: export becomes the first artifact in a repeatable workflow that can feed inspect, diff, dry-run import, and Git review.

Key flags

• --output-dir: target directory for the export tree.
• --org-id: export one explicit Grafana org.
• --all-orgs: export each visible org into per-org subdirectories. Prefer Basic auth.
• --flat: write files directly into each export variant directory.
• --overwrite: replace existing export files.
• --without-dashboard-raw, --without-dashboard-prompt, --without-dashboard-provisioning: skip a variant.
• --include-history: write dashboard revision-history artifacts under a history/ subdirectory for each exported org scope.
• --provisioning-provider-name, --provisioning-provider-org-id, --provisioning-provider-path: customize the generated provisioning provider file.
• --provisioning-provider-disable-deletion, --provisioning-provider-allow-ui-updates, --provisioning-provider-update-interval-seconds: tune provisioning behavior.
• --dry-run: preview what would be written.

Notes

• Use --profile for normal single-org export flows.
• For --all-orgs, prefer admin-backed --profile or direct Basic auth because token visibility may not cover every org you expect.
• When you combine --all-orgs with --include-history, each exported org scope gets its own org_<id>_<name>/history/ subtree.

What success looks like

• a raw/ tree exists for API replay and deeper inspection
• a prompt/ tree exists when you need a cleaner handoff for UI-style import
• a history/ tree exists under each exported org scope when you pass --include-history
• the export tree is stable enough to commit, diff, or inspect before mutation

Failure checks

• if dashboards are missing, check org scope before suspecting the exporter
• if multi-org output looks partial, check whether the credential can really see every org
• if expected history artifacts are missing, confirm that you passed --include-history and are checking the right org scope
• if the next step is import, confirm whether you should continue from raw/ or prompt/

Examples

# Purpose: Export dashboards to `raw/`, `prompt/`, and `provisioning/` files.
grafana-util dashboard export --profile prod --output-dir ./dashboards --overwrite

# Purpose: Export dashboards to `raw/`, `prompt/`, and `provisioning/` files.
grafana-util dashboard export --url http://localhost:3000 --token "$GRAFANA_API_TOKEN" --output-dir ./dashboards --overwrite

# Purpose: Export dashboards to `raw/`, `prompt/`, and `provisioning/` files.
grafana-util dashboard export --url http://localhost:3000 --basic-user admin --basic-password admin --all-orgs --output-dir ./dashboards --overwrite

# Purpose: Export dashboards plus per-org revision-history artifacts into a reusable tree.
grafana-util dashboard export --url http://localhost:3000 --basic-user admin --basic-password admin --all-orgs --include-history --output-dir ./dashboards --overwrite

Related commands

• dashboard analyze (local)
• dashboard import
• dashboard diff
• dashboard raw-to-prompt
• dashboard history