Implementing real-time logging with Elastic APM in Node.js applications

01 Oct 2023

In today’s world of distributed systems, it is crucial to have visibility into how our applications perform and behave in real-time. Logging plays a vital role in troubleshooting and monitoring these systems. Elastic APM (Application Performance Monitoring) provides a comprehensive solution for monitoring the performance of applications, including real-time logging. In this blog post, we will explore how to implement real-time logging with Elastic APM in Node.js applications.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

Node.js installed on your machine
Elastic APM Server and APM agents set up (optional, but recommended)

Step 1: Setting up Elastic APM agent for Node.js

To start, we need to install the Elastic APM agent for Node.js. Open your terminal and run the following command:

npm install elastic-apm-node

Next, we need to require the Elastic APM agent in our application code. Add the following lines to the top of your main entry file:

const apm = require('elastic-apm-node').start({
  // Configuration options
});

Replace // Configuration options with the appropriate configuration options if required. It is recommended to set up the APM agent with your APM server details, such as the server URL and service name.

Step 2: Implementing real-time logging

Once we have the APM agent set up, we can start implementing real-time logging. Elastic APM agent provides a built-in logger that logs events to the APM server. To log an event, use the following code snippet:

apm.logger.info('This is an example log message');

You can also log messages with different log levels such as error, debug, and warning:

apm.logger.error('An error occurred', { custom: 'metadata' });
apm.logger.debug('Debug log message');
apm.logger.warning('Warning log message');

You can include additional metadata as an object in the second parameter of the log functions.

Step 3: Configuring log levels

By default, the Elastic APM agent logs messages with the log level set to info. However, you can configure the log level to control which messages to log. To set the log level, add the following configuration option when starting the APM agent:

const apm = require('elastic-apm-node').start({
  logLevel: 'error',
});

The available log levels are trace, debug, info, warning, and error. Set the desired log level as per your application’s requirements.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we explored how to implement real-time logging with Elastic APM in Node.js applications. By leveraging the Elastic APM agent, we can easily log events and monitor our application’s performance in real-time. With this valuable information, we can quickly identify and resolve issues, ensuring a smooth and reliable user experience.

Start implementing real-time logging with Elastic APM in your Node.js applications today and gain better insights into your application’s performance.

#nodejs #apm #elasticapm