Python agent release notesRSS

Notes

This release of the Python agent provides a preview of a significant overhaul of our instrumentation for Tornado version 3.2 and earlier. Further improvements to our Django instrumentation are also included, allowing time spent in rendering Django sub templates to be viewed separately.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent see Status of the Python agent.

New Features

• Breakout of Django template rendering

  Previously when using Django templates, if the Django include tag was being used, the time spent rendering that sub template was shown under the generic Template/Render category. When the include tag is now used, a distinct metric is instead created corresponding to the rendering time for that sub template. This will appear in the transaction performance breakdown and also in sample transaction traces. In the case of sample transaction traces, as the name of the template will be included in the metric name, it now also provides additional context for understanding where any time is being spent when rendering that template.

Features Changed

• Preview of improved Tornado instrumentation

  Our instrumentation for Tornado version 3.2 and earlier has been experiencing a number of issues which could result in recording of data stopping and in some cases cause runtime exceptions which would affect the outcome of the executing web request. Upon investigation we found this has come about due to incremental changes in the internals of Tornado which were performed after we originally implemented the instrumentation for Tornado and which we didn't pick up as having being made. The Tornado developers have also recently released version 4.0 of Tornado. This version of Tornado has much more significant internal changes that result in our instrumentation failing completely.

  Before we could embark on trying to support version 4.0 of Tornado, we deemed it necessary to completely overhaul our existing instrumentation for older versions first in order to gives us good foundation on which to then implement support for version 4.0 of Tornado. This release of the agent provides a preview of the improved instrumentation for older versions of Tornado prior to version 4.0. The new instrumentation is not enabled by default and you will need to explicitly enable it. We have provided it as an opt in change at this point to allow you to properly test with the update first and provide us with any feedback on it and any remaining issues you may find.

  To enable the preview of the new Tornado instrumentation, you will need to add to the [newrelic]section of the agent configuration file the setting:

  feature_flag = tornado.instrumentation.r2

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  If you are running on Heroku and are not using an agent configuration file, you can instead set the NEW_RELIC_FEATURE_FLAG environment variable. You can do this by running the Heroku command:

  heroku config:set NEW_RELIC_FEATURE_FLAG=tornado.instrumentation.r2

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Bug Fixes

• When an exception was raised by a WSGI application during the yielding of response content via a generator, the recording of that web request by the agent may not be closed off properly. This would result in no further web requests handled by that thread being recorded and reported. If this occurred for all request handler threads, then no data would then be reported for the whole web process. This issue relates to behaviour of the Python garbage collector and when Python objects are destroyed. At this point in time we believe this only affects users of pypy and does not affect users of CPython as the reference counting model of CPython usually gives more deterministic behaviour around when Python objects are destroyed. We don't however rule out that it could affect CPython and may explain a situation matching this problem we have seen in a couple of cases where users were using uWSGI.

• When attempting to use Tornado as a worker for gunicorn, an exception could occur on startup which would result in gunicorn failing immediately and exiting. In order to use this combination it was previously necessary to disable the gunicorn specific instrumentation related to WSGI applications by adding to your agent configuration file:

  [import-hook:gunicorn.app.base] 
  enabled = false

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  If you were using the Tornado worker with gunicorn and using this workaround, the underlying problem has now been addressed and you should be able to remove that section from your agent configuration file.

• The mechanism we used for applying function wrappers for instrumentation was not being performed in the most optimal way for methods of classes. This could result in problems, including unexpected runtime exceptions, especially when trying to apply instrumentation to class methods, or methods of an existing instance of a type.

Notes

This release of the Python agent improves instrumentation for the Flask web framework and adds database monitoring support when using the pymssql client with a Microsoft SQL Server database.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent see Status of the Python agent.

New Features

• Improved instrumentation for Flask

  The Python agent now provides better web transaction naming and performance breakdown metrics when Flask style middleware are being used. This means that time spent in Flask @before_request and @after_request functions will now be broken out as their own metrics. If a @before_request function actually returns a response, the web transaction will be correctly named after that function rather than the Flask WSGI application entry point. These changes, in addition to being applied on middleware functions registered directly against the Flask application, will also work when Flask blueprints are used to encapsulate behavior.

• Browser monitoring auto-instrumentation when using Flask-Compress

  When the Flask-Compress package is used to perform response compression with Flask, insertion of browser monitoring tracking code into HTML responses is now automatically performed. Previously, if Flask-Compress was being used, manual instrumentation of HTML responses would have been required.

• Monitoring of MSSQL database

  Instrumentation is now provided for the pymssql database client module to monitor database calls made against a Microsoft SQL Server database.

Bug Fixes

• When using high-security mode, the use of newrelic.capture_request_params in the per request WSGI environ to enable capture of request parameters, possibly by setting it using the SetEnv directive when using Apache/mod_wsgi, was not being overridden and disabled as required.
• When using the DatabaseTrace context manager or associated wrappers explicitly to implement a custom monitoring mechanism for database calls, the instrumentation wrappers could fail with a TypeError exception when trying to internally derive the name of the database product being used.

Notes

This release of the Python agent improves data collection with the Django web framework. These improvements include better-targeted web transaction naming with the Django REST framework, better coverage of Django template inclusion tags, and better background task monitoring for Django management commands.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent see Status of the Python agent.

New Features

• Improved Django REST Framework naming

  Previously, when using the Django REST framework, web transactions were being named after the class based view that implemented the Django REST framework resources. Now, where such a view provides custom handler methods for different HTTP request method types or actions, the web transaction will be named after that custom handler method rather than the class as a whole. A new function breakdown metric will also be added for the custom handler method. This change will allow web requests using different HTTP request method types to be viewed separately.

• Django inclusion tag monitoring

  Usage of inclusion tags in Django templates can now be monitored and will appear in the transaction breakdown table, charts and sample transaction traces.

  Due to the possibility that a large range of custom inclusion tags might be used and that they may be invoked a large number of times in tight loops, tracking of all inclusion tags may not be practical or may not produce worthwhile results in the transaction breakdown or sample transaction traces. As a result, monitoring of inclusion tags is off by default, with the preferred approach being that specific inclusion tags of interest be individually enabled through the agent configuration file.

  To enable monitoring of specific inclusion tags, a new section called import-hook:django should be added to the agent configuration:

  [import-hook:django]
  instrumentation.templates.inclusion_tag = prepopulated_fields_js date_hierarchy

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  The instrumentation.templates.inclusion_tag setting within that section should then be set to a space separated list of the names of the inclusion tags to monitor. If there is any confusion over the identity of the inclusion tag, the full name of the inclusion tag function, with module name, can instead be listed. For example, data_hierarchy can also be identified using django.contrib.admin.templatetags.admin_list:date_hierarchy.

  In addition to specifying the names of the specific inclusion tags, it is also possible to specify * for instrumentation.templates.inclusion_tag in order to have usage of all inclusion tags be monitored:

  [import-hook:django]
  instrumentation.templates.inclusion_tag = *

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  Enabling monitoring of all inclusion tags in this way is only recommended in development or test environments so as to get an initial idea of what inclusion tags are worth tracking. Once identified, the specific inclusion tags of interest should thereafter be listed individually in a production environment.

• Better monitoring of Django management commands

  Previously, the Python agent required you to manually set up the instrumentation for each specific Django management command in the agent configuration file. We have now made that easier by integrating the functionality as part of the agent itself.

  Due to the limitations on what Django management commands can be monitored, you will still need to list explicitly the commands you want monitored, but it can now be done in a single location as a space separated list under the setting instrumentation.scripts.django_admin of the import-hook:django section:

  [import-hook:django] 
  instrumentation.scripts.django_admin = syncdb sqlflush

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  By default, we automatically specify the startup timeout to be 10.0 seconds when monitoring the Django management commands. If you need to override the startup timeout, you can set the instrumentation.background_task.startup_timeout setting within the same import-hook:django configuration section.

Notes

This release of the Python agent is a hotfix release to prevent proxy credentials set in the agent configuration file from being transmitted to New Relic.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent see Status of the Python agent.

Bug fixes

• Previously, the agent stripped the proxy_user and proxy_pass settings when it transmitted configuration settings to New Relic, so as not to expose credentials. However, the proxy_host setting was transmitted unaltered, even if it was a URI containing a username and/or password. With this release, proxy usernames and passwords specified in a URI in the proxy_host setting are obfuscated before being transmitted. In addition, the proxy_user and proxy_pass settings are obfuscated, and are also transmitted.

Notes

This release of the Python agent includes improvements to browser monitoring, with the primary change being that the Python agent is now able to perform automatic browser monitoring for a wider range of Python web frameworks running on a traditional WSGI server. This includes popular web frameworks such as Flask, Pyramid and Bottle.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent see our online help article on the status of the Python agent.

New Features

• Prior to this version, automatic browser monitoring for HTML pages served up by a Python web application was only available if using the Django web framework. With this release this capability has now been expanded in most cases to cover any Python web framework being hosted on top of a web server with a direct interface for hosting Python WSGI applications. WSGI servers this covers include the popular Python web hosting packages Apache/mod_wsgi, gunicorn and uWSGI. Support does however not currently extend to Python web hosting mechanisms which provide a bridge to a WSGI application from a native Python web application API, such as is the case if using the Tornado or Twisted WSGI containers.

  What the change means is that if using a previously unsupported web framework such as Flask, Pyramid or Bottle, and you were not manually instrumenting your HTML page responses to make use of browser monitoring, you will now start to see automatically end user performance metrics being captured and displayed in the New Relic APM UI. You will also have access to the optionally enabled browser monitoring agent, enabling access to details of AJAX calls made by your pages and also the details of any client side Javascript errors which might have been raised.

  If you were previously manually instrumenting your HTML page responses to enable browser monitoring, you should in most cases now be able to discontinue such manual instrumentation.

  Note that at this time, in addition to lack of support for Tornado and Twisted WSGI containers, we do still have a few restrictions in place which mean we may not always be able to enable automatic browser monitoring support. The key restriction is that when using a web framework, the automatic support for browser monitoring will be disabled if you are using a middleware or plugin for the framework, which performs compression of responses, or which otherwise modifies the content encoding for the response. For example, automatic browser monitoring will still not be available if using the flask.ext.compress plugin with Flask, or the paste.gzipper middleware with any WSGI application. We are working on extending coverage to cases where such middleware or plugins are being employed, but if you are using them, for now you will still need to resort to manually instrumenting your responses to enable browser monitoring. The only exception to this is the Django web framework, where we already previously had support for automatic browser monitoring even if the Django GZipMiddleware was being used.

  For further details on the updated browser monitoring support and manually instrumenting your HTML page responses, see our documentation on page load timing when using the Python agent. If browser monitoring support is not currently enabled for your application or you need to disable it, then see our documentation on browser settings.

Bug fixes/Improvements

• The agent was in some cases incorrectly inserting our instrumentation to HTML page responses which were marked as an attachment by way of a Content-Disposition HTTP response header or HTML page meta tag.

Notes

This release of the Python agent includes fixes related to tracking of external web service calls and minor improvements to automatic real user monitoring HTML insertion for Django. An offline developer mode has also be added to verify the operation of the agent with your application in a development or test environment.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent see our online help article on the status of the Python agent.

New Features

• An offline developer mode for the agent now exists to allow for verification that the operation of the agent will not affect the monitored web application in a development or test environment, without sending any actual data to New Relic. As it is an offline mode, no additional hosts will be recorded against your New Relic account for billing purposes.

  The offline mode does not allow for any viewing of collected metric information and other data for the purposes of monitoring your application, so it is not a solution for running New Relic locally. Being able to run it however, will allow you determine if a newer version of the agent, or an upgrade of any third party package in conjunction with the agent, will still function correctly before you jump to upgrading the packages in your production environment.

  The offline developer mode can be enabled by setting the developer_mode setting in the agent configuration file, or the NEW_RELIC_DEVELOPER_MODE environment variable, to true.

  Audit logging can also be enabled in conjunction with the offline developer mode so as to allow for the investigation of what data would be set to New Relic, resulting from the monitoring of your application, without actually sending any data to New Relic.

  Audit logging itself can be enabled by setting the the audit_log_file setting in the agent configuration file, or the NEW_RELIC_AUDIT_LOG environment variable. It is not recommended that audit logging be enabled for any extended period as the resulting log file will be quite large.

Bug fixes/Improvements

• When using the Bottle web framework, the setting error_collector.ignore_status_codes, for ignoring exceptions linked to specific HTTP response status codes, was being ignored in the case of using Bottle plugins and a plugin raised a HTTPError exception. This only affected Bottle versions 0.11 or higher.
• The New Relic feature for cross application tracing between two monitored web applications was not working when a Python web application was using recent versions of the urllib3 and requests modules for initiating the call to the backend web application service. This affected version 1.8 or higher of urllib3 and version 2.3.0 of the requests module.
• External web service calls were not being monitored when using the prepared requests feature of the requests module directly.
• When using the urllib or urllib2 modules, if a URI of the form file://..., corresponding to a local file on the file system, was passed to any function monitored by our instrumentation, a metric and transaction trace node were being generated corresponding to an external web service with host name of 'unknown'. The instrumentation now correctly filters out URIs which do not correspond to an actual remote web service.
• The automatic means for inserting page load timing tracking code for real user monitoring (RUM) into HTML page responses returned from a Django application now works no matter the case used for HTML elements. Previously automatic insertion would only be performed where HTML elements were lower case.
• RUM tracking code inserted automatically into HTML page responses from Django is now more optimally placed when a X-UA-Compatible meta tag appeared in the head element of the HTML page. Previously the RUM code was placed at the end of the head element when such a meta tag existed. This would have meant that page loading times would not have accurately reflected time spent in loading assets from any script elements appear after the meta tag. The RUM code is now placed immediately after the meta tag. Placement is not done before the meta tag as some browsers require that the meta tag appear prior to any script elements.
• RUM tracking code inserted automatucally into HTML page responses from Django is now placed after any Content-Type meta tag which also contains a charset attribute. This is necessary as some browsers will not recognise such a meta tag if it does not occur early in the page content. If a script tag was therefore placed before this meta tag it could have resulted in the meta tag being pushed down sufficiently far enough in the page content so as not to be recognised.
• Data corresponding to a long running transaction monitored by the agent, which spanned the time when a server side configuration change was made in the New Relic UI, will now be discarded. This is to avoid a problem where the response time average for web requests on the overview chart would be skewed so as to appear greater at the time a server side configuration change was made. This problem would result as when such a server side configuration change is made, the agent will momentarily disconnect and reregister. In that time, any short lived transactions would not be monitored, but the long running transaction which only completed after registration occurred was incorrecly being recorded, with an undue effect on average response times.

Notes

This release of the Python agent is a hot fix release to address an issue introduced in version 2.22.0.19 when applying additional function traces from the agent configuration.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent see our online help article on the status of the Python agent.

Bug fixes:

• When using the transaction_tracer.function_trace setting in the agent configuration file to apply additional function traces, the trace was not being applied and a message indicating an instrumentation error would appear in the Python agent log file. The error in itself would not have prevented the agent from starting and running, but no data would be collected for the designated functions as intended.

Notes

This release of the Python agent introduces a means to enforce High-security mode from the agent configuration, as well as enabling capture of Insights events for background tasks.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent see our online help article on the status of the Python agent.

New Features:

• Insights events are now also recorded for background tasks, in addition to the existing events already captured for web transactions.
• The application to record an exception against can now be explicitly provided using the keyword argument application when calling newrelic.agent.record_exception(). This enables the ability to record exceptions outside of the context of a monitored web transaction or background task. A suitable application object can be retrieved using newrelic.agent.application().

Features Changed:

• Enforcing High-security mode from the agent configuration is now supported.

  High-security mode is a feature to prevent any sensitive data from being sent to New Relic. The local setting for the agent must match the server setting in the New Relic APM UI. If there is a mismatch, the agent will log a message and act as if it is disabled. A link to the docs for High-security mode can be found here

  Attributes of high-security mode (when enabled):

  • Requires an SSL connection to be used.
  • Prevents capture of request parameters.
  • Suppresses capture of custom parameters.

  The default setting for High-security mode is false.

  If you already have high-security mode enabled within the New Relic APM UI, you will need to add:

  high_security = true

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  to your local agent configuration file.

  Or if using Heroku, set the NEW_RELIC_HIGH_SECURITY environment variable by running:

  heroku config:set NEW_RELIC_HIGH_SECURITY=true

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• When using the gunicorn WSGI server, the request URL which appears in transaction trace samples and error details will now be sourced from the RAW_URI variable passed by gunicorn in the WSGI environ dictionary. This will ensure that what is displayed is the raw URL before % escape sequences have been decoded. This avoids the problem of the URL being shown as a raw byte sequence.

• When audit logging is enabled, the responses returned from our data collector service will now also be logged.

Bug fixes/Improvements:

• An incorrect module name was being derived for methods of classes, when used in web transaction and function trace naming, where the method was from a base class defined in a different module, but invoked via a derived class.
• When using Django class based views, if a class based view was used explicitly from within a view handler, the name of the class based view method was overriding the web transaction name, which at that point would have been set to the view handler. The class based view method name will now only be used for the web transaction name when it is actually registered as the view handler.
• Explain plans for SQL queries were not working when the SQL database cursor had been configured to return a dictionary rather than a tuple for each row set when the original query was made.

Notes

This release of the Python agent addresses a bug which in some cases caused database connection parameters, which could include login credentials, to be logged to the local system by the monitored application if Python agent debug logging is being captured.

The agent can be installed using easy_install/pip/distribute via the Python Package Index or can be downloaded directly from our download site.

For a list of known issues with the Python agent see our online help article on the status of the Python agent.

Bugs Fixed

• When Python agent debug logging was enabled by setting log_level to debug in the Python agent configuration, database connection details, including login credentials could be logged in the local Python agent log file.

  The details may also have been logged even if log_level had not been set to debug, but the Python logging module had been configured to collect and log messages logged at the log level of logging.DEBUG.

  This issue was introduced in version 2.20.0.17 of the Python agent.