ExInsights
Elixir client library to log telemetry data on Azure Application Insights.
Installation
Install from hex by adding ex_insights to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:
def deps do
[
{:ex_insights, "~> 0.1.0"}
]
endNote:
The library is packaged as an application. In elixir <= 1.3.x you will need to add it explicitly to the list of
applications started before your own inside mix.exs like this:
# This step is only required for older elixir installations
def application do
[
applications: [:ex_insights]
]
endConfiguration
You need at the very least to set your instrumentation key in order to start accepting telemetry requests
on azure. You can do this by setting the instrumentation_key property like this:
config :ex_insights,
instrumentation_key: "0000-1111-2222-3333"You can also use an environment variable instead if that's your preference
config :ex_insights,
instrumentation_key: {:system, "INSTRUMENTATION_KEY"}
# at runtime the application will look for the INSTRUMENTATION_KEY environment variable
If you forget to set the key the application will raise with an appropriate message anytime an ExInsights.track_xxx function is used
Usage
All public tracking methods are under the ExInsights module. Examples:
# will post a click custom_event to azure
ExInsights.track_event("click")
# with custom defined property "type" and measurement "count"
ExInsights.track_event("click", %{type: "button"}, %{count: 2})
# send custom metric data. Does not support aggregated data (count/stdDev, min, max)
ExInsights.track_metric("bananas", 10)
For more details look at the ExInsights module documentation.
Inner workings
-
Calling any tracking function
ExInsights.track_xxxfrom your code will not immediately send the data to Azure. It will instead be aggregated in memory until theflush_timeris triggered (every 60 secs) and the data will be batch sent. - If you are behind a firewall (usually happens in production deployments) make sure your network rules allow HTTP POSTs to https://dc.services.visualstudio.com
- If requests to azure tracking services fail (network or server errors or bad requests) you will not be alerted.