The HTML dashboard can either be generated from an existing SimpleXML dashboard, or it can be written by hand. We recommend creating a SimpleXML dashboard and then converting it. This ensures that the most up-to-date code is generated from the version you are using. For a refresher on how to convert a SimpleXML dashboard to an HTML dashboard, please see Chapter 4, Basic Views and Dashboards. The Splunk web framework is built in to the HTML dashboard and into the core programming of Splunk. The framework is designed to allow maximum extensibility and versatility in the development of dashboards.

The basic code of the previously generated dashboard (see Chapter 4, Basic Views and Dashboards—the dashboard is called "Overview") contains various items that are consistent across dashboards. Generally, all of the HTML and CSS definitions are placed within the dashboard code first, with the JavaScript portion at the end. This is a pretty standard best practice, as this allows the...