Unable to send Date in dd MMM yyyy format as a field from telegraf to Influx

Telegraf
1

Hello Everyone, I want to send a date with the format e.g. 30 May 2021 as a field from telegraf to Influxdb. I am using Powershell script to create this date value and send the same to Influxdb. My commands looks as below
$ sysLastBootTime = $userSystem.ConvertToDateTime($userSystem.LastBootUpTime).tostring("dd/MM/yyyy") write-host "Windows_rebootpending,host=$($ComputerName.ToString()) Days=$($sysuptime.Days.ToString()),LastBootTime=$($ sysLastBootTime ) $($date)" If I format the date to ddMMyyyy its being sent else dd MM yyyy or dd MMM yyyy or dd/MM/yyyy results in no metrics sent. Could someone suggest or help on this to make work.

2

If you are creating this date in a Powershell script, in order to send it to
InfluxDB, and you find that the format ddMMyyyy works, why not just use that?

What is so special to you about creating a date in a format that InfluxDB
doesn’t like, that you want to spend time trying to get it to accept it? Why
not just go with the format InfluxDB is happy with?

Antony.

3

Thanks for having a look. I need to show up the date in a single column in DD.MM.YYYY or ddMMMyyyy format in grafana dashboard.

4

In that case I suggest sending it to telegraf / InfluxDB as an Epoch timestamp
and let Grafana do the formatting.

I assume Windows Powershell knows how to do Epoch timestamps?

Antony.

5

I tried it but could see no valid unit for formatting epoch values in field formatting options. I am not sure if field can format epoch valuee

6

I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure this out and unhelpful/sarcastic comments (@Pooh) really don’t help anyone.

I was using the Influx CLI to pass information to the DB and it was working fine until i tried to provide a timestamp for the data. (we collect stats in batches which are grouped by hour so we can’t let Influx assign the time)
For example:
$PushToInflux = & “C:\Program Files\InfluxData\influx.exe” write -b $Bucket -p s $DataValues

This worked for me: (ref: 01 - InfluxDB: First Steps and Guide-Lines – Wiki-WebPerfect)

$Header = @{Authorization = “Token <YOUR_AUTH_TOKEN>”}
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri ‘http://<your_InfluxDB_server>:8086/api/v2/write?org=<INFLUX_YOUR_ORG>&bucket=<YOUR_BUCKET>’ -Header $Header -Method POST -Body ‘test_measurement_cpu,host=server01,os=windows cpuload=33 1587646932000000000’

To get the timestamp in the correct format i used:
[Datetime]$logHour = $myTimeValue #The original datetime of: 2022-08-18T07:00:00Z
[int64]$ETime = “$((DateTimeOffset).ToUnixTimeMilliseconds())” #Gives you: 1660809600000000000

In the example above replace the timestamp 1587646932000000000 with the variable $ETime
So the -Body variable contains:
$Body = ‘MyMeasurement,TagName=’+$someVariable+’ Field1=‘+$Var1+’ ‘+$ETime+’’
(remember to double the single quotes in Powershell)
The Body output should read:
'MyMeasurement,TagName=MyVariable Field1=TextVar1 1660809600000000000

Then pass the whole thing to Invoke-WebRequest and it should give you the 204 response:
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $InfluxConnect -Header $Header -Method POST -Body $Body

Hope this helps :slight_smile: