AppSignal apm for Ruby

AppSignal solves all your Ruby monitoring needs in a single tool. You and your team can focus on writing code and we'll provide the alerts if your app has any issues.

• AppSignal.com website
• Documentation
• Ruby code documentation
• Support

Description

The AppSignal gem collects exceptions and performance data from your Ruby applications and sends it to AppSignal for analysis. Get alerted when an error occurs or an endpoint is responding very slowly.

AppSignal aims to provide a one stop solution to all your monitoring needs. Track metrics from your servers with our Host metrics and graph everything else with our Custom metrics feature.

Usage

First make sure you've installed AppSignal in your application by following the steps in Installation.

AppSignal will automatically monitor requests, report any exceptions that are thrown and any performance issues that might have occurred.

You can also add extra information to requests by adding custom instrumentation and by adding tags.

Track any error

Catch any error and report it to AppSignal, even if it doesn't crash a request.

begin
  config = File.read("config.yml")
rescue => e
  Appsignal.set_error(e)
  # Load alternative config
  config = { :name => ENV["NAME"] }
end

Read more about Exception handling in our documentation.

Tagging

Need more information with errors and performance issues? Add tags to your requests to identify common factors for problems.

Appsignal.tag_request(
  user: current_user.id,
  locale: I18n.locale
)

Read more about Tagging in our documentation.

Custom instrumentation

If you need more fine-grained instrumentation you can add custom instrumentation anywhere in your code.

# Simple instrumentation
Appsignal.instrument("array_to_hash.expensive_logic", "Complex calculations") do
  array = [["a", 1], ["b", 2], ["c", 3]]
  Hash[array]
end

# Add the query that you're monitoring
sql = "SELECT * FROM posts ORDER BY created_at DESC LIMIT 1"
Appsignal.instrument("fetch.custom_database", "Fetch latest post", sql) do
  # ...
end

# Nested instrumentation calls are also supported!
Appsignal.instrument("fetch.custom_database", "Fetch current user") do
  # ...

  Appsignal.instrument("write.custom_database", "Write user update") do
    # ...
  end
end

Read more about custom instrumentation in our documentation.

Installation

First, sign up for an AppSignal account and add the appsignal gem to your Gemfile. Then, run bundle install.

# Gemfile
gem "appsignal"

Afterward, you can use the appsignal install command to install AppSignal into your application by using the "Push API key". This will guide you through our installation wizard.

appsignal install [push api key]

Depending on what framework or gems you use some manual integration is required. Follow the steps in the wizard or consult our integrations page for help.

If you're stuck feel free to contact us!

Supported frameworks and gems

AppSignal automatically supports a collection of Ruby frameworks and gems, including but not limited to:

• Ruby on Rails
• Rack
• Sinatra
• Padrino
• Grape
• Webmachine
• Capistrano
• Sidekiq
• Delayed Job
• Resque
• Rake

AppSignal instrumentation doesn't depend on automatic integrations. It's easy to set up custom instrumentation to add keep track of anything.

For more detailed information and examples please visit our integrations page.

Front-end monitoring (Beta)

We have a Front-end monitoring program running in Beta currently. Be sure to check it out!

Supported systems

Currently the AppSignal agent works on most Unix-like operating systems, such as most Linux distributions, FreeBSD, macOS, excluding Microsoft Windows.

For more detailed information please visit our Supported systems page.

Releases

Following the process below to release a new version of the Ruby gem.

1. Make sure mono is installed by following the installation instructions.
2. Run: mono publish
   • Mono will automatically bump the version number based on the .changesets/.
   • Mono will automatically update the CHANGELOG.md file based on the .changesets/.
3. Confirm with your two-factor authentication token for Rubygems.org, twice.

Development

Installation

Make sure you have Bundler installed and then use the Rake install task to install all possible dependencies.

# Install Bundler
gem install bundler
# Bootstrap the project
mono bootstrap
# Install the AppSignal extension and _all_ gems we support.
bundle exec rake install
# Only install the AppSignal extension.
bundle exec rake extension:install

Git source for Bundler

When specifying a git source for the AppSignal gem in Bundler we do not support JRuby. This is because our gemspec defaults to the Ruby implementation for installing the AppSignal C-extension.

# Gemfile
gem "appsignal",
  :git => "https://github.com/appsignal/appsignal-ruby.git",
  :branch => "main"

When you need to use a git source of the gem in your JRuby install, you'll need to run the following to install the C-extension on JRuby. Note that this post-install step is not possible on platforms such as Heroku where the app is sent through a deploy pipeline and the app is started immediately after.

bundle install
(cd $(bundle show appsignal)/ext && rake)

Testing

bundle exec rspec
# Or with one file
bundle exec rspec spec/lib/appsignal_spec.rb

Note that some specs depend on certain other gems to run and if they are not loaded RSpec will not run them. See also Testing with other gems.

Testing with other gems

AppSignal runs in many different configurations. To replicate these configurations you need to run the spec suite with a specific Gemfile.

BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/capistrano2.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/capistrano3.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/grape.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/hanami.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/http5.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/no_dependencies.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/padrino.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/que.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/que_beta.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/rails-3.2.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/rails-4.0.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/rails-4.1.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/rails-4.2.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/rails-5.0.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/rails-5.1.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/rails-5.2.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/rails-6.0.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/resque-1.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/resque-2.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/sequel-435.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/sequel.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/sinatra.gemfile bundle exec rspec
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/webmachine.gemfile bundle exec rspec

If you have either RVM, rbenv or chruby installed you can also use rake build_matrix:local:generate to generate a script that runs specs for all Ruby versions and gem combinations we support.

We run the suite against all of the Gemfiles mentioned above and on a number of different Ruby versions.

Versioning

This gem uses Semantic Versioning.

The main branch corresponds to the current stable release of the gem.

The develop branch is used for development of features that will end up in the next minor release.

Open a Pull Request on the main branch if you're fixing a bug. For new new features, open a Pull Request on the develop branch.

Every stable and unstable release is tagged in git with a version tag.

Contributing

Thinking of contributing to our gem? Awesome! 🚀

Please follow our Contributing guide in our documentation and follow our Code of Conduct.

Also, we would be very happy to send you Stroopwafles. Have look at everyone we send a package to so far on our Stroopwafles page.

Support

Contact us and speak directly with the engineers working on AppSignal. They will help you get set up, tweak your code and make sure you get the most out of using AppSignal.

Also see our SUPPORT.md file.