Node.js agent release notesRSS

New features

• Added product attribute to existing datastore instrumentations.
• Added db.collection to datastore span event attributes.

Improvements

• trusted_account_key, account_id, and primary_application_id may now be configured via a configuration file while in serverless mode.
• Optimized exclusive time duration calculator.

Previously, the agent would spend a lot of time sorting redundant arrays while calculating the exclusive time for the segments of a trace. This has been refactored into a single postorder traversal over the tree which will calculate the exclusive time for all segments in the subtree rooted at a given segment.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where data belonging to distributed traces starting in the Node.js agent would be prioritized over data produced from traces starting in other language agents. Previously, the agent would use the same random number for both the transaction priority (used for data sampling) and the distributed tracing trace sampling decision (whether to create DT data for a given transaction). This random number reuse resulted in a bias that caused data from distributed traces started in the Node.js agent to be prioritized above data that belongs to distributed traces started in other language agents. The agent now makes individual rolls for each of these quantities (i.e. the transaction priority and trace sampling decision), eliminating the bias.
• Prevent a split on undefined location under certain conditions in Memcached.

New features

• Added SNS to message shim library names.

• Added check for collect_span_events in config sent from the server on connect.

  Collection of span events can be disabled from the server configuration, but not enabled.

Improvements

• Refactored Segment#toJSON to be more readable.

• Added a try/catch to config initialization to safely handle invalid setting combinations.

  When an error is caught the agent is marked as disabled, which ultimately returns a stub API and keeps the process running.

• String truncation is now done using a binary search over the byte length of the string.

  Previously this truncation was done using a linear search for the proper byte length.

• Optimized segment and span attribute filtering.

Fixes

• Fixed issue where shim.createSegment() could result in modifying the parent when opaque.

• Fixed issue where http-outbound would modify parent segments when parent is opaque.

• Moved processing of exclusive time attribute out of toJSON and into finalize to only be calculated once.

  Previously, serializing a segment would result in calculating and caching exclusive time which could result in issues if serialized prior to ending.

New features

• Added span_events and transaction_segments attribute destinations.

  Span event and segment attributes can now be filtered using the same include/exclude config rules as other types. See agent attribute configuration for more details.

• Added metadata field to connect payload, for collecting NEW_RELIC_METADATA_-prefixed environment variables.

• Added DynamoDB to datastores.

• Added opaque option to datastore operation spec.

• Added Kubernetes utilization detection.

• Upgraded concat-stream and readable-stream to next major version.

  These modules had previously been held back due to support for Node <6. Since v5.0.0 we dropped that support thus enabling these updates.

• Added SQS as a supported messaging library name.

• Enabled tracking of callback via message-shim.recordConsume when no messageHandler provided.

Improvements

• Replaced make rules with npm scripts.

Bug fixes

• The agent will now consistently harvest in all response cases when in serverless mode.

  Previously, the agent's harvest was in a race with process suspension in the event of an uncaught exception, or responding without calling a callback. A synchronous harvesting process is now used to circumvent this racing issue.

• Fixed issue with socket connection errors causing the agent to stop attempting to connect at startup.

• Fixed opaque segment functionality for message-shim.recordProduce.

• Fixed opaque segment functionality for message-shim.recordConsume.

Improvements

• Removed installation of Oracle container test scripts.

• Replaced explicit config.high_security === true checks with general truthiness checks.

  The agent will now treat any truthy value in the high_security config setting as if it is enabled.

Bug fixes

• Fixed bug where agent would stop sending data to New Relic servers when a connectivity issue was encountered.
• Fixed unit test with incorrect usage of cross application tracing.

New features

• Added Neptune to the known database names.

Improvements

• Updated log messages for missing configuration files to point at the base configuration.

  Previously the log messages pointed at an internal file defining default values for every configuration.

• Upgraded to @newrelic/native-metrics v4.

• Removed outdated config files.

• Removed old, outdated examples.

Bug fixes

• Fixed an issue where old CAT headers would be injected while distributed tracing was enabled.

  This would happen if both cross_application_tracing.enabled and distributed_tracing.enabled were set to true and an instrumentation disabled tracing for an outbound request.

• Fixed access to ConglomerateShim in shimmer.

New features

• Added new shim type: ConglomerateShim

  This shim class is useful for instrumenting modules which implement several service interfaces of different types.

Improvements

• Disabled logging by default when serverless_mode is enabled. Please note serverless/lambda monitoring is not yet officially released.

• null trace attribute values are no longer sent to New Relic.

  This change brings the Node agent in alignment with the behavior of other language agents.

Notes

• Dropped support for Node versions less than 6.

• Agent no longer creates transactions when in a stopped, stopping or errored state.

• Removed public API methods that have been deprecated since Agent v2: createTracer, createWebTransaction, createBackgroundTransaction, and addCustomParameter/(s). See the Migration Guide for more information.

• Flagged API#setIgnoreTransaction as deprecated; TransactionHandle#ignore should be used instead.

• Released several feature flags. These flags are no longer used:

  • feature_flag.custom_instrumentation
  • feature_flag.custom_metrics
  • feature_flag.synthetics
  • feature_flag.native_metrics

• Added plugins.native_metrics.enabled configuration value.

  This configuration value controls the use of the @newrelic/native-metrics module. When set to false the agent will not attempt to load that module.

• Custom metrics recorded via recordMetric and incrementMetric API calls now automatically have the name prepended with 'Custom/'. Usages of these APIs that manually prepend with 'Custom/' will need to remove the manually specified one or will end up with metrics prepended with 'Custom/Custom/'.

• Dropped support for node-cassandra-cql.

• Removed from ignore_server_configuration config setting.

• Removed deprecated configuration settings capture_params and ignored_params.

• The agent will no longer cause a stack overflow when logging at trace level to stdout.

  Previously, the agent would inadvertently trigger a trace level log from its trace level log (through wrapping a nextTick call), causing a stack overflow. The agent now detects this case and aborts the nested call.

New features

• The agent now reacts to failed New Relic requests based on response code, as opposed to parsing an exception message in the response body.

Improvements

• Fixed clearing of active harvest via _stopHarvester()
• Fixed handling of harvest endpoints when not all fail.
• Added agent state "connecting" to indicate when handshake with New Relic servers is starting. This can be triggered on startup and restarts.
• Added --no-package-lock to unit and integration rules.
• Released protocol_17 feature flag.
• Replaced nsp with npm audit in security checks.
• Collector now specify application/json content-type when data is compressed instead of octet-stream.
• Bumped ecmaVersion in test .eslintrc to 8

New features

• Added IP address collection and forwarding of metadata headers for upcoming protocol 17.

  These features are currently behind the protocol_17 feature flag until all parts of protocol 17 are implemented.

Improvements

• Converted error handling in CollectorAPI and RemoteMethod to callbacks.

  Previously many of the errors were thrown. For consistency with async errors, these are now handed to the callback instead of thrown. The old behavior could result in a crash under a few circumstances, such as when the agent exceeded a configured maximum payload size. These errors came from RemoteMethod._safeRequest. Since these errors are handed to the callback instead of thrown, this bug is no longer a potential.

• Refactored harvest interactions in preparation for protocol 17 status codes.