Timing is Everything. Writing the Clock Panel Plugin for Grafana 3.0

Daniel Lee's blog post details the development process for creating a Clock Panel plugin for Grafana 3.0, leveraging the new plugin system architecture that allows for the sharing of plugins via Grafana.net. He explains the different types of plugins available in Grafana—Datasources, Apps, Panels, and Dashboards—and focuses specifically on panel plugins, which are used to display data on dashboards. Lee's Clock Panel plugin uses JavaScript to fetch the current time without the need for a datasource and offers a step-by-step guide on setting up a plugin development environment using tools like Angular, ES6, Babel, and Grunt. He describes the creation of essential files such as plugin.json and module.js, and the styling of the plugin using CSS. The post concludes with instructions on publishing the plugin to Grafana.net and hints at future enhancements to make the clock customizable with features like date formatting and countdown capabilities.