Instrumental Java Agent

Instrumental is a application monitoring platform built for developers who want a better understanding of their production software. Powerful tools, like the Instrumental Query Language, combined with an exploration-focused interface allow you to get real answers to complex questions, in real-time.

This agent supports custom metric monitoring for Java applications. It provides high-data reliability at high scale, without ever blocking your process or causing an exception.

Setup & Usage

Add the following to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.instrumentalapp</groupId>
  <artifactId>instrumental_agent</artifactId>
  <version>1.0.1</version>
</dependency>

Visit instrumentalapp.com and create an account, then initialize the agent with your project API token.

import com.instrumentalapp.*;

Agent agent = new Agent(new AgentOptions().setApiKey("PROJECT_API_TOKEN").setEnabled(isProduction));

You'll probably want something like the above, only enabling the agent in production mode so you don't have development and production data writing to the same value. Or you can setup two projects, so that you can verify stats in one, and release them to production in another.

Now you can begin to use Instrumental to track your application.

agent.gauge("load", 1.23);     // value at a point in time

agent.increment("signups");    // increasing value, think "events"

agent.time("query_time", new Runnable() { // time execution
  public void run() {
    // Do something
  }});

agent.time("query_time", new Runnable() { // prefer milliseconds?
  public void run() {
    // Do something
  }});

Note: For your app's safety, the agent is meant to isolate your app from any problems our service might suffer. If it is unable to connect to the service, it will discard data after reaching a low memory threshold.

Want to track an event (like an application deploy, or downtime)? You can capture events that are instantaneous, or events that happen over a period of time.

agent.notice('Jeffy deployed rev ef3d6a');  // instantaneous event
agent.notice('Testing socket buffer increase', System.currentTimeMillis() / 1000 - 60 * 10, 60*10); // an event with a duration

Server Metrics

Want server stats like load, memory, etc.? Check out InstrumentalD.

Troubleshooting & Help

We are here to help. Email us at support@instrumentalapp.com.

Release Process

1. Pull latest master
2. Merge feature branch(es) into master
3. script/test
4. Increment version in code:

• src/main/java/com/instrumentalapp/Agent.java
• pom.xml
• README.md

5. Update CHANGELOG.md
6. Commit "Release vX.Y.Z"
7. Push to GitHub
8. Tag version: git tag 'vX.Y.Z' && git push --tags
9. eval $(gpg-agent --daemon)
10. gpg --use-agent --armor --detach-sign and press ^C after authenticating
11. Until maven gpg 1.7 is released, you may need to do this instead: gpg --use-agent --armor --detach-sign --output $(mktemp) pom.xml
12. mvn clean deploy
13. Use the git tag and make a new release with target/instrumental_agent-* attached, https://github.com/instrumental/instrumental_agent-java/tags
14. Refresh documentation on instrumentalapp.com

If you have never released before

Somewhere around the gpg step in the release process, things will break unless you have all the right bits twiddled:

1. Install gnupg brew install gnupg
2. If you don't have a key in gpg, gpg --gen-key
3. Look at your key gpg --list-secret-keys
4. Send that key to ubuntu using the ID from the previous step: gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --send-keys YOURKEYIDGOESHERE
5. Create a settings.xml file in ~/.m2/settings.xml that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<settings xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.1.0"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/SETTINGS/1.1.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/settings-1.1.0.xsd">

  <servers>
    <server>
      <id>ossrh</id>
      <username>YOURUSERNAMEHERE</username>
      <password>YOURPASSWORDHERE</password>
    </server>
  </servers>
</settings>

After doing all this, if you get an error indicating that your credentials are not working, talk to @esquivalient.

Version Policy

This library follows Semantic Versioning 2.0.0.