Metrics Collection for Spring Boot REST APIs

Question

I am trying to collect metrics for my Spring Boot(2.1.0.RELEASE) Application. Specifically, I want to know

1. No of times individual REST endpoints were called.
2. Time taken by each of those endpoints to process the request.
3. Average rate at which my requests are being processed/errored.

The actuator /actuator/metrics endpoint gives lot of info but I am not sure if any of those are useful for my case. Also, can someone tell if @Timed(or any other out-of-the-box annotation) can be used for achieving those stats or I have to use something like below in every controller method:

  Timer timer = new SimpleMeterRegistry().timer("timer.name");
timer.record(() -> {
    // all logic here
});

I tried using @Timed on my controller method but it doesn't adds any new response to the /actuator/metrics endpoint.

Answer 1

You can use Spring Boot /actuator/metrics/http.server.requests to get all endPoints which are executed with their count, exception, outcome, status, total time, etc as follow.

If you want to see details for particular endPoint then you can do it by calling request as follow

localhost:8889/actuator/metrics/http.server.requests?tag=uri:<endPoint>
localhost:8889/actuator/metrics/http.server.requests?tag=uri:/user/asset/getAllAssets
localhost:8889/actuator/metrics/http.server.requests?tag=uri:/user/asset/getAllAssets&tag=status:200

• You will get COUNT as how many times particular endPoint has been called
• You will get COUNT as how many times particular endPoint has been
  called with a particular Status
• To get the average time to execute endPoint you can do TOTAL_TIME/COUNT for particular endPoint as well as for whole application

---

localhost:8889/actuator/metrics/http.server.requests

{
    "name": "http.server.requests",
    "description": null,
    "baseUnit": "seconds",
    "measurements": [
        {
            "statistic": "COUNT",
            "value": 3
        },
        {
            "statistic": "TOTAL_TIME",
            "value": 0.21817219999999998
        },
        {
            "statistic": "MAX",
            "value": 0.1379249
        }
    ],
    "availableTags": [
        {
            "tag": "exception",
            "values": [
                "MethodArgumentTypeMismatchException",
                "None"
            ]
        },
        {
            "tag": "method",
            "values": [
                "GET"
            ]
        },
        {
            "tag": "uri",
            "values": [
                "/{id}.*",
                "/user/asset/getAsset/{assetId}",
                "/user/asset/getAllAssets"
            ]
        },
        {
            "tag": "outcome",
            "values": [
                "CLIENT_ERROR",
                "SUCCESS"
            ]
        },
        {
            "tag": "status",
            "values": [
                "400",
                "404",
                "200"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

localhost:8889/actuator/metrics/http.server.requests?tag=uri:/user/asset/getAllAssets

{
    "name": "http.server.requests",
    "description": null,
    "baseUnit": "seconds",
    "measurements": [
        {
            "statistic": "COUNT",
            "value": 1
        },
        {
            "statistic": "TOTAL_TIME",
            "value": 0.1379249
        },
        {
            "statistic": "MAX",
            "value": 0
        }
    ],
    "availableTags": [
        {
            "tag": "exception",
            "values": [
                "None"
            ]
        },
        {
            "tag": "method",
            "values": [
                "GET"
            ]
        },
        {
            "tag": "outcome",
            "values": [
                "SUCCESS"
            ]
        },
        {
            "tag": "status",
            "values": [
                "200"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

Answer 2

Another way is to use Spring Boot Admin. For that, we have to configure client-server. To avoid the error make sure the version for client-server dependency is the same. We can add the required metric from the dropdown as shown in images.

Client-Side:

pom.xml

<dependency>
     <groupId>de.codecentric</groupId>
     <artifactId>spring-boot-admin-starter-client</artifactId>
     <version>2.1.4</version>
</dependency>

application.properties

spring.boot.admin.api-path=/instances
spring.boot.admin.client.url=http://localhost:6699
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*

Server Side:

application.properties

server.port = 6699
spring.boot.admin.server.url=http://localhost:8889

pom.xml

 <dependency>
         <groupId>de.codecentric</groupId>
         <artifactId>spring-boot-admin-starter-server</artifactId>
         <version>2.1.4</version>
    </dependency>

Add @EnableAdminServer

import de.codecentric.boot.admin.server.config.EnableAdminServer;

@SpringBootApplication
@EnableAdminServer
public class AdminApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(AdminApplication.class, args);
    }

}

GUI http://localhost:6699/#/applications

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