Node.js agent release notesRSS

Notes

• Added support for Label Categories

  The agent now supports setting Labels for your application on a per instance level, using either an environment variable, or a config file setting. https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/apm/new-relic-apm/maintenance/categories-...

• Improved transaction names for express 4

  express 4 added the ability to mount apps and routers at specific urls. The node agent would previously use only the portion of the route that was the last router or app matched as the transaction name. Transaction names will now include the entire matched route.

• Added detection for uninstrumented instances of modules that should be instrumented

  The agent will now detect if an application has required a module before require('newrelic') .If this occurs, the agent will add a warning in the log file and display a warning banner in the UI.

• Added more logging to custom instrumentation APIs at debug level.

  The logging was improved for the benefit of people using the following APIs: createTracer, createWebTransaction, createBackgroundTransaction, and endTransaction. It will log when transactions are created and when transactions are ended. It will also log when it can't create a tracer due to there being no active transaction.

• Fixed a bug in PostgreSQL instrumentation where the event emitter from query could not chain .on calls. This patch was contributed by sebastianhoitz.

• Fixed a bug in createBackgroundTransaction where if the agent was disabled it didn't take a group argument. This patch was contributed by nullvariable.

• Fixed a bug in our URL parsing where in Node v0.11.14 url.parse returns a differently shaped object than expected. This patch was contributed by atomantic

  Note: Node v0.11.x is not officially supported, but Node v0.12 will be and this patch helps us get ready for that.

Notes

• Added support for Cross Application Tracing

  The agent now supports Cross Application Tracing, which allows the New Relic APM UI to display traces that span multiple applications.

• Fixed a bug that would cause application to crash on request when using the kraken framework.

• Loosened the restrictions on the app_name setting. Application names may now include any Unicode characters.

Fixes

• Fixed a type error while checking payload size before reporting to New Relic.

  When this occurred the agent would fail to send the payload to New Relic. This was more likely to occur in high throughput applications.

• Fixed a bug where mutibyte characters would cause an error when sending data to the New Relic servers.

Notes

• Updated hapi instrumentation to support the recently released v6.9.

• Fixed a bug where an invalid package.json could cause the agent to crash while it recursed through node_modules gathering version details.

• Properly name other SQL queries.

  Previously when the agent failed to parse SQL it would create a metric stating the database type, query type, and query table were all unknown. This has been changed to keep track of database type and create an appropriate other operation metric like other agents.

Notes

• Custom Instrumentation functions now pass through the return value of their passed in callback.

• Multiple improvements to PostgreSQL instrumentation

  When no callback was detected in the query functions, we were inserting our own. The insertion itself caused a crash. Adding a callback also modified the behavior of the pg module. Instead, we now listen for error or end events to finish segments.

  We now generate metrics for statement type/table combinations. Look for these in the database tab your APM Account!

Fixes

• Improved MongoDB find instrumentation.

  The mongo driver provides many ways to invoke its API and find documents. In previous releases, some API invocations would create transaction trace segments that would not end properly, leading to inaccurately large segment times. This release ensures the agent always instruments finding and iterating through documents, ensuring segment times are accurate.

Improvements

• PostgreSQL support via the `pg` driver.

  The Node.js agent now records the amount of time spent in transactions with PostgreSQL databases. This timing can be viewed in the Transactions page within individual transactions and their traces.

  The agent supports all of the following `pg` usage scenarios:

  • Using the pure javascript API exposed directly from `pg`
  • Using the "native" API exposed from `pg.native`
  • Using the "native" API exposed directly from `pg` when the `NODE_PG_FORCE_NATIVE` environment variable is set
  • Using the pure javascript API from the `pg.js` module

Fixes

• Removed a preemptive DNS lookup of the New Relic servers that could cause errors when behind a proxy.