RED

RED (Request, Error and Duration) is a golang library, exposes total number of requests, error rate and duration of HTTP requests for a HTTP service out of the box. This library is inspired by Tom Wilkie's RED methods

From the Four Golden signals to the RED way of creating Metrics. The RED method is a subset of “The Four Golden Signals” that’s focused on micro-service architectures and which includes these metrics:

Rate: the number of requests our service is serving per second;

Error: the number of failed requests per second;

Duration: the amount of time it takes to process a request;

Measuring these metrics is pretty straightforward, especially with tools like Prometheus, and using the same metrics for every service helps us create a standard and easy-to-read format for dashboards that have to show the results.

Usage

Installation

go get github.com/achilles42/red
go get github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/promhttp

Example

package main

import (
	"log"
	"net/http"
	"os"

	red "github.com/achilles42/red"
	"github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus/promhttp"
)

func HandleHelloRequest() http.Handler {
	return http.HandlerFunc(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
		w.Write([]byte("Hello, World!"))
	})
}

func main() {
	addr := os.Getenv("ADDR")

	mux := http.NewServeMux()
	mux.Handle("/v1/hello", red.InstrumentationMiddleware(HandleHelloRequest()))
	mux.Handle("/metrics", promhttp.Handler())

	log.Printf("server is listening at %s", addr)
	log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(addr, mux))
}

To start the application:

export ADDR=localhost:8080 && go run main.go

To access the metrics:

curl http://localhost:8080/metrics

# HELP http_requests_total How many HTTP requests processed, partitioned by status code and HTTP method.
# TYPE http_requests_total counter
http_requests_total{method="GET",route="/v1/hello",status_code="200"} 1

# HELP request_duration_seconds Time (in seconds) spent serving HTTP requests.
# TYPE request_duration_seconds histogram
request_duration_seconds_bucket{method="GET",route="/v1/hello",status_code="200",le="0.005"} 3
request_duration_seconds_bucket{method="GET",route="/v1/hello",status_code="200",le="0.01"} 3
request_duration_seconds_bucket{method="GET",route="/v1/hello",status_code="200",le="0.025"} 3

Setup Prometheus and Grafana

docker run -p 9090:9090 -v /tmp/prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml prom/prometheus

docker run -d --name=grafana -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana

Add data source on Grafana with http://localhost:9090

Import RED.json dashboard file located in docs/dashboard/RED.json

RED Dashboard

Contribution

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/[USERNAME]/red