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Implementation of a DropWizard metrics Reporter that sends data as dimensional metrics to New Relic

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newrelic/dropwizard-metrics-newrelic

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New Relic Dropwizard reporter

A Dropwizard metrics reporter for sending dimensional metrics to New Relic using the New Relic Java Telemetry SDK.

For the juicy details on how Dropwizard metrics are mapped to New Relic dimensional metrics, please visit the exporter specs documentation repo.

How To Use

gradle

Add required build.gradle dependencies to your project:

implementation("com.newrelic.telemetry:dropwizard-metrics-newrelic:1.0.0")
implementation("com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-core:0.16.0")
implementation("com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-http-okhttp:0.16.0")

If you do not want to depend on okhttp, you can remove the dependency on telemetry-http-okhttp, but you will still need to construct a MetricBatchSender instance using its builder and provide an alternate implementation of the com.newrelic.telemetry.http.HttpPoster interface. See Constructing a MetricBatchSender without OkHttp below for more information.

Note: to use the sample code below, you will need the telemetry-http-okhttp library mentioned above. It provides implementations communicating via HTTP using the okhttp libraries, respectively.

Start the reporter

Early in the lifecycle of your application, you will want to create and start a NewRelicReporter. This should be created after the MetricRegistry is created and before any metrics have been generated.

The YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY is referring to your New Relic Event API insert key or license key. For more information and how to obtain a key, visit our docs.

The METRIC_INGEST_URI is the ingest endpoint for collected metrics. The default value will point to the US Production ingest endpoint. For additional information on alternative ingest endpoints, visit our docs.

MetricRegistry metricRegistry = new MetricRegistry(); // If you're already using dropwizard-metrics you may already have one of these.
...
String apiKey = System.getenv("YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY");

// For US region: https://metric-api.newrelic.com/metric/v1
// For EU region: https://metric-api.eu.newrelic.com/metric/v1
String ingestURI = System.getenv("METRIC_INGEST_URI");

SenderConfiguration senderConfiguration = MetricBatchSender.configurationBuilder()
        .apiKey(apiKey)
        .useLicenseKey(true) // Optional if using a license key instead of an insert key
        .endpoint(URI.create(ingestURI).toURL())
        .httpPoster(new OkHttpPoster(Duration.ofSeconds(2)))
        .build();

MetricBatchSender metricBatchSender = MetricBatchSender.create(senderConfiguration);

Attributes commonAttributes = new Attributes()
            .put("host", InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName())
            .put("appName", "Your Application Name Here")
            .put("other", "any other common attributes you wish");
            
NewRelicReporter reporter = NewRelicReporter.build(metricRegistry, metricBatchSender)
        .commonAttributes(commonAttributes)
        .build();
        
reporter.start(15, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

Constructing a MetricBatchSender without OkHttp

Starting the reporter always requires constructing a MetricBatchSender. To build the sender, call MetricBatchSender.configurationBuilder().httpPoster(<HttpPoster implementation>).build().

The example above uses an OkHttpPoster, which is an implementation of HttpPoster included with telemetry-http-okhttp. If you wish to omit the dependency on okhttp, you will need to provide an alternate implementation of HttpPoster.

One option is to use Java11HttpPoster, another New Relic-provided implementation available for projects running on Java 11+. To use, include the telemetry-http-java11 dependency in your project:

implementation("com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-http-java11:0.15.0")

then construct the sender:

MetricBatchSender.configurationBuilder().httpPoster(new Java11HttpPoster()).build()

Another option is to write your own HttpPoster implementation. The interface includes one method, post. You can reference the OkHttpPoster and Java11HttpPoster source code for examples of how to implement the interface. Then construct the MetricBatchSender with your custom implementation, following the examples above.

Customizing Reported Metrics

If you would like to customize the way metric names or attributes are reported to New Relic, you will want to supply customizers to the NewRelicReporterBuilder.

Consider metrics with tags encoded in their names, formatted like so: "metricName[tag:value,othertag:othervalue]", you might set up a reporter to report the metric name as metricName and add merge of the key/value pairs in name with the commonAttributes.

MetricRegistry metricRegistry = new MetricRegistry(); // If you're already using dropwizard-metrics you may already have one of these.
...
String apiKey = "<YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY>";
MetricBatchSender metricBatchSender = MetricBatchSenderFactory
                .fromHttpImplementation(OkHttpPoster::new)
                .createBatchSender(apiKey);

Attributes commonAttributes = new Attributes()
            .put("host", InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName())
            .put("appName", "Your Application Name Here")
            .put("other", "any other common attributes you wish");

MetricAttributesCustomizer mergeAttributesFromTaggedMetricName =
    (name, metric, attributes) -> {
      Attributes tagsAsAttributes = new Attributes();

      // get a stream of each tag:value pair within the square brackets of name and add
      // each pair to the tagsAsAttributes Attributes object
      Stream.of(name.substring(name.indexOf('['), name.indexOf(']')).split(","))
          .forEach(
              str -> {
                String[] keyValuePair = str.split(":");

                tagsAsAttributes.put(keyValuePair[0], keyValuePair[1]);
              });

      return tagsAsAttributes.putAll(attributes);
    };

NewRelicReporter reporter = NewRelicReporter.build(metricRegistry, metricBatchSender)
        .commonAttributes(commonAttributes)
        // customizer to strip encoded tags from metric name
        .metricNameCustomizer(name -> name.substring(0, name.indexOf('[')))
        .metricAttributeCustomizer(mergeAttributesFromTaggedMetricName)
        .build();

reporter.start(15, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

Dropwizard integration

If you are using the actual Dropwizard REST framework, you can get a reference to the MetricRegistry from the Dropwizard Environment in order to register your reporter.
It might look something like this:

public class MyApplication extends Application<MyConfig> {

...
    @Override
    public void run(MyConfig configuration, Environment environment) {
        MetricRegistry registry = environment.metrics();
        MetricBatchSender metricBatchSender = buildMetricBatchSender(); // see above for more complete example
        NewRelicReporter reporter = NewRelicReporter.build(registry, metricBatchSender)
                .commonAttributes(commonAttributes)
                .build();
        reporter.start(15, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

        ...
    }
...
}

Dropwizard Metrics Reporter

If you have a dropwizard project and have at least dropwizard-core 2.1.6, then you can perform the following steps to automatically report metrics to New Relic.

Add the following to your dropwizard YAML config file.

metrics:
  frequency: 1 minute                       # Default is 1 second.
  reporters:
    - type: newrelic
      apiKey: <YOUR_SECRET_API_KEY>
      overrideUri:                          # Optional. Defaults to https://metric-api.newrelic.com/
      disabledMetricAttributes:             # Optional. Defaults to (none)
      commonAttributes:                     # Optional. Defaults to (none)
      includes:                             # Optional. Defaults to (all).
      excludes:                             # Optional. Defaults to (none).

Once your dropwizard application starts, your metrics should start appearing in New Relic.

Javadoc for this project can be found here: Javadocs

Building

This project requires Java 11. To compile, run the tests and build the jars:

$ ./gradlew build

Find and use your data

For tips on how to find and query your data, see Find metric data.

For general querying information, see:

Support

New Relic hosts and moderates an online forum where customers can interact with New Relic employees as well as other customers to get help and share best practices. Like all official New Relic open source projects, there's a related Community topic in the New Relic Explorers Hub. You can find this project's topic/threads here:

Java Agent Forum Topics

Contributing

We encourage your contributions to improve the New Relic Dropwizard reporter! Keep in mind that when you submit your pull request, you'll need to sign the CLA via the click-through using CLA-Assistant. You only have to sign the CLA one time per project.

If you have any questions, or to execute our corporate CLA (which is required if your contribution is on behalf of a company), drop us an email at [email protected].

A note about vulnerabilities

As noted in our security policy, New Relic is committed to the privacy and security of our customers and their data. We believe that providing coordinated disclosure by security researchers and engaging with the security community are important means to achieve our security goals.

If you believe you have found a security vulnerability in this project or any of New Relic's products or websites, we welcome and greatly appreciate you reporting it to New Relic through HackerOne.

If you would like to contribute to this project, review these guidelines.

Licensing

The New Relic Dropwizard reporter is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.