New and improved instrumentation helpers

Added

• Add Appsignal.monitor and Appsignal.monitor_and_stop instrumentation helpers. These helpers are a replacement for the Appsignal.monitor_transaction and Appsignal.monitor_single_transaction helpers.

  Use these new helpers to create an AppSignal transaction and track any exceptions that occur within the instrumented block. This new helper supports custom namespaces and has a simpler way to set an action name. Use this helper in combination with our other Appsignal.set_* helpers to add more metadata to the transaction.

  Ruby

  # New helper
  Appsignal.monitor(
    :namespace => "my_namespace",
    :action => "MyClass#my_method"
  ) do
    # Track an instrumentation event
    Appsignal.instrument("my_event.my_group") do
      # Some code
    end
  end
   
  # Old helper
  Appsignal.monitor_transaction(
    "process_action.my_group",
    :class_name => "MyClass",
    :action_name => "my_method"
  ) do
    # Some code
  end

  The Appsignal.monitor_and_stop helper can be used in the same scenarios as the Appsignal.monitor_single_transaction helper is used. One-off Ruby scripts that are not part of a long running process.

  Read our instrumentation documentation for more information about using theAppsignal.monitor helper.

• Add Appsignal.set_session_data helper. Set custom session data on the current transaction with the Appsignal.set_session_data helper. Note that this will overwrite any request session data that would be set automatically on the transaction. When this method is called multiple times, it will overwrite the previously set value.

  Ruby

  Appsignal.set_session_data("data1" => "value1", "data2" => "value2")

• Add Appsignal.set_headers helper. Set custom request headers on the current transaction with the Appsignal.set_headers helper. Note that this will overwrite any request headers that would be set automatically on the transaction. When this method is called multiple times, it will overwrite the previously set value.

  Ruby

  Appsignal.set_headers("PATH_INFO" => "/some-path", "HTTP_USER_AGENT" => "Firefox")

• Report request headers for webmachine apps.

Changed

• Allow tags to have boolean (true/false) values.

  Ruby

  Appsignal.set_tags("my_tag_is_amazing" => true)
  Appsignal.set_tags("my_tag_is_false" => false)

• Optimize Sidekiq job arguments being recorded. Job arguments are only fetched and set when we sample the job transaction, which should decrease our overhead for all jobs we don't sample.

Deprecated

• Deprecate Transaction sample helpers: Transaction#set_sample_data and Transaction#sample_data. Please use one of the other sample data helpers instead. See our sample data guide.

• Deprecate the Appsignal::Transaction#set_http_or_background_queue_start method. Use the Appsignal::Transaction#set_queue_start helper instead.

• Deprecate the Appsignal.without_instrumentation helper. Use the Appsignal.ignore_instrumentation_events helper instead.

• Deprecate the Appsignal::Transaction::GenericRequest class. Use the Appsignal.set_* helpers to set metadata on the Transaction instead. Read our sample data guide for more information.

• Deprecate the 'ID', 'request', and 'options' arguments for the Transaction.create and Transaction.new methods. To add metadata to the transaction, use the Appsignal.set_* helpers. Read our sample data guide for more information on how to set metadata on transactions.

  Ruby

  # Before
  Appsignal::Transaction.create(
    SecureRandom.uuid,
    "my_namespace",
    Appsignal::Transaction::GenericRequest.new(env) # env is a request env Hash
  )
   
  # After
  Appsignal::Transaction.create("my_namespace")

• Deprecate the Appsignal.monitor_transaction and Appsignal.monitor_single_transaction helpers. See the entry about the replacement helpers Appsignal.monitor and Appsignal.monitor_and_stop.

View the Ruby gem v3.11.0 changelog for more information.