You can report custom events to New Relic in several ways, including the New Relic Event API, APM agent APIs, Browser agent APIs, and the Mobile SDK.
This document contains general requirements and rules for inserting and using custom events and their associated attributes. Additional requirements may apply based on the method you use.
General requirements
How long custom data is retained depends on your Insights subscription and its associated data retention.
When reporting custom events and attributes, follow these general requirements for supported data types, naming syntax, and size:
| Requirement | Description |
|---|---|
| Payload |
Total maximum size or length: 1 MB maximum per POST. We highly recommend using compression. The Event API has additional HTTP rate limits. |
| Attribute data types |
Attribute values can be either a string or a numeric integer or float. If your attribute values contain date information, define it as an unformatted Unix timestamp (in seconds or milliseconds) by using the Insights data formatter. |
| Attribute size |
Maximum Maximum attribute
Maximum total attributes per event: 254. Exception: If you use an APM agent API, the max is 64. Maximum total attributes per event type: 48,000. |
| Naming syntax |
Attribute names can be a combination of alphanumeric characters, colons ( Event types (using the Do not use words reserved for use by NRQL. |
| Null values | The database does not store any data with a null value. |
Reserved words
Avoid using the following reserved words as names for events and attributes. Otherwise, unexpected results may occur.
This is not a complete list. In general, it's a good practice to avoid using MySQL-reserved words to avoid collision with future New Relic functionality.
| Keyword | Description |
|---|---|
accountId |
This is a reserved attribute name. If it's included, it will be dropped during ingest. |
appId |
Value must be an integer. If it is not an integer, the attribute name and value will be dropped during ingest. |
eventType |
The event type as stored in New Relic. New Relic agents and scripts normally report this as |
Prohibited eventType values |
For your
These event types are reserved for use by New Relic. Events passed in with these |
timestamp |
Must be a Unix epoch timestamp. You can define timestamps either in seconds or in milliseconds. It must be +/-1 day (24 hours) of the current time on the server. |
| Log forwarding terms | The following keys are reserved by the Infrastructure agent's log forwarding feature: entity.guid, hostname, plugin.type, fb.input. If used, they are dropped during ingest and a warning is added to the logs. |
| NRQL syntax terms |
If you need to use NRQL syntax terms as attribute names, including dotted attributes, they must be enclosed in backticks; for example,
|
Additional Browser PageAction requirements
For additional requirements for using New Relic Browser's custom PageAction event, see Insert custom data via New Relic Browser agent.
Additional Event API requirements
For more requirements and details for the Event API, see Event API.
Event type limits
The current limit for total number of eventType values is 250 per sub-account in a given 24-hour time period. If a user exceeds this limit, New Relic may filter or drop data. Event types include:
- Default events from New Relic agents
- Custom events from New Relic agents
- Custom events from Insights custom event inserter
If you have a use case that requires to need to store more than 250 unique event types in a given 24-hour period, file a New Relic support ticket at support.newrelic.com.