Node.js agent release notesRSS

Notes

• The New Relic Node Agent v2 is here!

  This release contains major changes to the agent instrumentation API, making it easier to create and distribute your own instrumentation for third party modules. Check out Upgrade the Node agent or the Migration Guide for more information on upgrading your application to this version.

• BREAKING: Reversed naming and ignore rules.

  Naming rules are now applied in the order they are defined.

• BREAKING: De-duplicated HTTP request transactions.

  Only one transaction is created per request event emitted by an HTTP server. Previously this was one transaction per listener per event emitted.

• BREAKING: Stopped swallowing outbound request errors.

  Errors emitted by outbound HTTP requests will no longer be swallowed by the agent.

• BREAKING: Node v0.8 is no longer supported. Minimum version is now v0.10.

  The v1 agent will continue to support Node 0.8 but will no longer receive updates.

• BREAKING: npm v1 is no longer supported. Minimum version is now v2.0.0.

New features

• Added API for writing messaging framework instrumentation.

  Introduced new MessageShim class for writing instrumentation. This shim can be accessed using the newrelic.instrumentMessages() API method.

• Added amqplib instrumentation.

  Applications driven by amqplib consumers will now have transactions automatically created for consumed messages. See Troubleshoot message consumers for more information on this instrumentation and its limitations.

• Advanced instrumentation API is now generally available.

  New methods for instrumenting common modules were introduced during the Agent v2 beta. These APIs are now available to everyone:

  • newrelic.instrument()/Shim: This method can be used to instrument generic modules, such as connection pooling libraries, task schedulers, or anything else not covered by a specialized class.
  • newrelic.instrumentDatastore()/DatastoreShim: This method is good for instrumenting datastore modules such as mongodb, mysql, or pg.
  • newrelic.instrumentWebframework()/WebFrameworkShim: This method is used for instrumenting web frameworks like restify or express.

  Documentation and tutorials for the new API can be found on our GitHub documentation page: http://newrelic.github.io/node-newrelic/

Improvements

• Rewrote built-in instrumentation using the new Shim classes.

  The following instrumentations have been rewritten:

  • Datastores
    • cassandra-driver
    • ioredis
    • memcached
    • mongodb
    • mysql
    • node-cassandra-cql
    • pg
    • redis
  • Web frameworks
    • director
    • express
    • hapi
    • restify

• The @newrelic/native-metrics module is now included as an optional dependency.

  This module will be installed automatically with Agent v2. If it fails to install the agent will still function.

New features

• Node v8 is officially supported with the exception of async/await.

  Support for the new async/await keywords is coming in a future release. Until this support is added, New Relic does not support and highly discourages using the Node.js agent with applications that utilize async/await, as it could result in transaction state loss and data being mixed between transactions.

Fixes

• Fixed issues related to changes in the core networking modules that resulted in transaction state loss. Also instrumented new asynchronous API methods in crypto and inspector.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a transaction state loss introduced in Node 7.10.0 when using net.createConnection.

  Added a new segment for net.connect, net.createConnection, and http.Agent#createConnection. Sockets created within a transaction also have their emit bound to the segment.

• Fixed a typo about the name of the default configuration file. Thanks Jacob LeGrone (@jlegrone)!

Notes

• Dropped support for Express <4.6.

New features

• Improved API for writing web framework instrumentation.

  Introduced a new WebFrameworkShim class for writing instrumentation. This shim can be accessed using the newrelic.instrumentWebframework API method.

Improvements

• Incorporated fixes and features from 1.38.0, 1.38.1, and 1.38.2.

• Only one transaction is created for each request emitted by a server.

  Previously we created a transaction for each listener on the request event.

• Fixed the beta sign up link in the README.md.

• Rewrote instrumentation for Connect, Director, Express, Hapi, and Restify.

  These instrumentations were rewritten using the new WebFrameworkShim. As a consequence of this rewrite, all our instrumentations now have feature parity, meaning every instrumentation will create Middleware metrics for your server.

  Tutorials on using the new instrumentation shim can be found on our API docs: http://newrelic.github.io/node-newrelic/.

• Removed express_segments feature flag.

  This configuration previously controlled the creation of middleware metrics in our Express instrumentation. With the move to the WebFrameworkShim this was dropped.

New features

• Error messages are redacted in High-security mode now.

• New configurations were added for disabling some New Relic API methods. These default to enabled and are all disabled in High-security mode.

  • api.custom_parameters_enabled controls newrelic.addCustomParameters()
  • api.custom_events_enabled controls newrelic.recordCustomEvent()
  • api.notice_error_enabled controls newrelic.noticeError()

• Updated the default value for transaction_tracer.record_sql to obfuscated.

  This value was previously off by default. This change brings the New Relic Node Agent defaults in line with other New Relic Agents.

Bug fixes

• Our when instrumentation better detects when a module is actually when.

  Thanks to Pasi Eronen (@pasieronen) for the contribution!

• Quiet a warning in our native promise instrumentation on Node 0.10.

• Fixed a bug in the generic pool instrumentation affecting version 3.

Bug fixes

• When.js hooks similar to Promise.onPotentiallyUnhandledRejection now function as intended.

  Previously, hooks like Promise.onPotentiallyUnhandledRejection would not work due to the way the agent wraps the promise constructor. When.js expects these handles to be assigned directly onto the promise constructor, and our wrapper was intercepting the assignment. The wrapper will now properly proxy these values and assign them onto the original constructor, restoring the proper behavior.

• Express route parameters will now be properly attached to the corresponding transaction.

  Previously, our express instrumentation would read the route parameters and place them on the segment responsible for matching the parameters. This behavior did not place the parameters on the transaction that the segments belonged to, causing the parameters to not show up properly on transaction traces and transaction events.

Bug fixes

• Fixed issue with when.js instrumentation not preserving all properties on wrapped Promise constructor.

  Previously, the when.js instrumentation would cause an unhandled exception when private methods on the Promise constructor were called (e.g. when adapting functions that do not use promises).

Improvements

• We're excited to announce the addition of a new Node VMs page to the UI that provides a curated view of the cpu, memory, garbage collection, and event loop metrics that we have added over the past several releases of the node agent and native-metrics module.

  For more information, see our documentation.

• Added instrumentation of When.js promise library.

  Previously, the transaction state could get lost when multiple promises resolved close to each other.

• Fixed name of environment variable in error message when configuration file cannot be found. Thanks to @Maubic for the contribution!

• Updated tests to work with the latest version of Node 7.

New Features

• Added support for recording interfaces that return promises instead of taking callbacks. See RecorderSpec.promise for more details.

  Thanks to Gert Sallaerts (@Gertt) for this contribution.

Improvements

• Incorporated fixes and features from 1.36.2, 1.37.0, and 1.37.1.

• Domains are no longer preemptively instrumented, thus applications that do not use domains will not load the domain module.

  Including the domain module causes a small amount of extra overhead in other core libraries that must keep the domain state set correctly.