Line Protocol

The line protocol is a text based format for writing points to InfluxDB. Each line defines a single point. Multiple lines must be separated by the newline character \n. The format of the line consists of three parts:

[key] [fields] [timestamp]

Each section is separated by spaces. The minimum required point consists of a measurement name and at least one field. Points without a specified timestamp will be written using the server’s local timestamp. Timestamps are assumed to be in nanoseconds unless a precision value is passed in the query string.

Key

The key is the measurement name and any optional tags separated by commas. Measurement names must escape commas and spaces. Tag keys and tag values must escape commas, spaces, and equal signs. Use a backslash (\) to escape characters, for example: \ and \,. All tag values are stored as strings and should not be surrounded in quotes.

Tags should be sorted by key before being sent for best performance. The sort should match that from the Go bytes.Compare function (http://golang.org/pkg/bytes/#Compare).

Examples

# measurement only
cpu

# measurement and tags
cpu,host=serverA,region=us-west

# measurement with commas
cpu\,01,host=serverA,region=us-west

# tag value with spaces
cpu,host=server\ A,region=us\ west

Fields

Fields are key-value metrics associated with the measurement. Every line must have at least one field. Multiple fields must be separated with commas and not spaces.

Field keys are always strings and follow the same syntactical rules as described above for tag keys and values. Field values can be one of four types. The first value written for a given field on a given measurement defines the type of that field for all series under that measurement.

Integers are numeric values that do not include a decimal and are followed by a trailing i when inserted (e.g. 1i, 345i, 2015i, -10i). Note that all values must have a trailing i. If they do not they will be written as floats.

Floats are numeric values that are not followed by a trailing i. (e.g. 1, 1.0, -3.14, 6.0e5, 10).

Boolean values indicate true or false. Valid boolean strings for line protocol are (t, T, true, True, TRUE, f, F, false, False and FALSE).

Strings are text values. All string field values must be surrounded in double-quotes ". If the string contains a double-quote, the double-quote must be escaped with a backslash, e.g. \".

# integer value
cpu value=1i

# float value
cpu_load value=1

cpu_load value=1.0

cpu_load value=1.2

# boolean value
error fatal=true

# string value
event msg="logged out"

# multiple values
cpu load=10,alert=true,reason="value above maximum threshold"

Timestamp

The timestamp section is optional but should be specified if possible. The value is an integer representing nanoseconds since the epoch. If the timestamp is not provided the point will inherit the server’s local timestamp.

Some write APIs allow passing a lower precision. If the API supports a lower precision, the timestamp may also be an integer epoch in microseconds, milliseconds, seconds, minutes or hours. We recommend using the least precise precision possible as this can result in significant improvements in compression.

Full Example

A full example is shown below.

cpu,host=server01,region=uswest value=1 1434055562000000000
cpu,host=server02,region=uswest value=3 1434055562000010000
temperature,machine=unit42,type=assembly internal=32,external=100 1434055562000000035
temperature,machine=unit143,type=assembly internal=22,external=130 1434055562005000035

In this example the first line shows a measurement of “cpu”, there are two tags “host” and “region”, the value is 1.0, and the timestamp is 1434055562000000000. Following this is a second line, also a point in the measurement “cpu” but belonging to a different “host”.

The two last lines of the example show two points in the measurement “temperature”. There are two tags “machine” and “type” with fields for “internal” and “external” temperatures.

cpu,host=server\ 01,region=uswest value=1,msg="all systems nominal"
cpu,host=server\ 01,region=us\,west value_int=1i

In these examples, the “host” is set to server 01. The field value associated with field key msg is double-quoted, as it is a string. The second example shows a region of us,west with the comma properly escaped. In the first example value is written as a floating point number. In the second, value_int is an integer.