Application Insights for Node.js

This project provides a Node.js SDK for Application Insights. Application Insights is a service that allows developers to keep their applications available, performant, and successful. This node module will allow you to send telemetry of various kinds (event, trace, exception, etc.) to the Application Insights service where they can be visualized in the Azure Portal.

Requirements

Install

npm install applicationinsights

Get an instrumentation key

Note: an instrumentation key is required before any data can be sent. Please see the "Getting an Application Insights Instrumentation Key" section of the wiki for more information. To try the SDK without an instrumentation key, set the instrumentationKey config value to a non-empty string.

Usage

This will enable request monitoring, unhandled exception tracking, and system performance monitoring (CPU/Memory/RPS)

import appInsights = require("applicationinsights");
appInsights.setup("<instrumentation_key>").start();

The instrumentation key can also be set in the environment variable APPINSIGHTS_INSTRUMENTATIONKEY. If this is done, no argument is required when calling appInsights.setup() or appInsights.getClient().

Customized Usage

#####Disabling auto-collection#####

import appInsights = require("applicationinsights");
appInsights.setup("<instrumentation_key>")
    .setAutoCollectRequests(false)
    .setAutoCollectPerformance(false)
    .setAutoCollectExceptions(false)
    // no telemetry will be sent until .start() is called
    .start();

#####Using multiple instrumentaion keys#####

import appInsights = require("applicationinsights");

// configure auto-collection with one instrumentation key
appInsights.setup("<instrumentation_key>").start();

// get a client for another instrumentation key
var otherClient = appInsights.getClient("<other_instrumentation_key>");
otherClient.trackEvent("custom event");

#####Custom monitoring#####

import appInsights = require("applicationinsights");
var client = appInsights.getClient();

client.trackEvent("custom event", {customProperty: "custom property value"});
client.trackException(new Error("handled exceptions can be logged with this method"));
client.trackMetric("custom metric", 3);
client.trackTrace("trace message");

#####Example with tracking dependency#####

import appInsights = require("applicationinsights");
var client = appInsights.getClient();

var startTime = Date.now();
// execute dependency call
var endTime = Date.now();

var elapsedTime = endTime - startTime;
var success = true;
client.trackDependency("dependency name", "command name", elapsedTime, success);

#####Example with manual request tracking of all "GET" requests#####

var http = require("http");
var appInsights = require("applicationinsights");
appInsights.setup("<instrumentation_key>")
    .setAutoCollectRequests(false) // disable auto-collection of requests for this example
    .start();

// assign common properties to all telemetry sent from the default client
appInsights.client.commonProperties = {
    environment: process.env.SOME_ENV_VARIABLE
};

// track a system startup event
appInsights.client.trackEvent("server start");

// create server
var port = process.env.port || 1337
var server = http.createServer(function (req, res) {
    // track all "GET" requests
    if(req.method === "GET") {
        appInsights.client.trackRequest(req, res);
    }

    res.writeHead(200, { "Content-Type": "text/plain" });
    res.end("Hello World\n");
}).listen(port);

// track startup time of the server as a custom metric
var start = +new Date;
server.on("listening", () => {
    var end = +new Date;
    var duration = end - start;
    appInsights.client.trackMetric("StartupTime", duration);
});

Contributing

Development environment

• Install dev dependencies

  npm install 
  

• (optional) Set an environment variable to your instrumentation key

  set APPINSIGHTS_INSTRUMENTATIONKEY=<insert_your_instrumentation_key_here>
  

• Run tests

  npm test