New Relic Java Telemetry SDK

The New Relic Java Telemetry SDK is an easy way to send data to New Relic. The SDK currently supports sending the MELT telemetry data types (Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces) via the following APIs:

• Metric API - for dimensional metrics
• Trace API - for building up traces with spans
• Events API - for custom events
• Log API - for log data

Why is this cool?

Send data to New Relic! No agent required.

Our Telemetry SDK tries to be helpful, so your job of sending telemetry data to New Relic can be done in the right way, easily. We've covered all of the basics for you so you can focus on writing feature code directly related to your business need or interest.

Why would you want to use the telemetry SDK?

We imagine you (or your customers) are interested in the telemetry data, generated by your tool, framework, or code, in New Relic. You can write an exporter to do so! Check out the telemetry_examples module to get started.

For the most recently published version, see Releases

Installation

See Getting started

Getting started

In order to send metrics or spans to New Relic, you will need an Insights Insert API Key or a License Key.

Maven dependencies:

    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.newrelic.telemetry</groupId>
      <artifactId>telemetry-core</artifactId>
      <version>0.12.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.newrelic.telemetry</groupId>
      <artifactId>telemetry-http-okhttp</artifactId>
      <version>0.12.0</version>
    </dependency>

Gradle dependencies:

implementation("com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-core:0.12.0")
implementation("com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-http-okhttp:0.12.0")

Take a look at the example code in the telemetry_examples module. We recommend looking at the TelemetryClientExample first.

Note: If you do not want to include okhttp as a transitive depenedency, you will need to provide a custom implementation of the com.newrelic.telemetry.http.HttpPoster interface, rather than using the com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-http-okhttp library.

Usage

Logging

The Telemetry SDK uses slf4j for all logging. Having a slf4j implementation in your application is required in order to see log information. See the slf4j documentation for details.

Enabling audit logging

The various builders for the Telemetry SDK components include an option to enableAuditLogging. Enabling this option will cause the SDK to product additional logging at DEBUG level. This logging includes the details of every payload sent to the New Relic APIs, and the responses from those APIs.

WARNING: If you enable audit logging, all the data in your spans and metrics will be sent to your logging system. It is recommended that you only enable audit logging when absolutely necessary.

Use License Key

The various builders for the Telemetry SDK components include an option to useLicenseKey. Enabling this option will cause the SDK to inform the API endpoints the key you provided is a New Relic License Key.

For developers:

Requirements

• Java 8 or greater
• For IDEA:
• Docker & docker-compose must be installed for integration testing

Find and use your data

Tips on how to find and query your data in New Relic:

• Find metric data
• Find trace/span data

For general querying information, see:

• Query New Relic data
• Intro to NRQL

Building

CI builds are run on Github Actions:

The project uses gradle 6 for building, and the gradle wrapper is provided.

To compile, run the tests and build the jars:

$ ./gradlew build

Testing

End-to-end integration tests are included. They are implemented with the testcontainers library; mock-server provides the backend.

There are two modes to run the integration tests.

• Run with gradle: $ ./gradlew integration_test:test
• Run the integration test classes in IDEA directly. It should "just work".

Code style

This project uses the google-java-format code style, and it is easily applied via an included gradle plugin:

$ ./gradlew googleJavaFormat verifyGoogleJavaFormat

Please be sure to run the formatter before committing any changes. There is a pre-commit-hook.sh which can be applied automatically before commits by moving it into .git/hooks/pre-commit.

Module structure:

telemetry_core

This is the core module for sending dimensional metrics and spans to New Relic. It contains low level APIs as well as higher level "best practice" implementations that compose interactions with the lower level modules. The library is published under maven coordinates:

com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-core

telemetry-http-java11

This is an implementation of the required http client interface using Java 11 JDK classes as the underlying library. The telemetry-http-java11 library is published under the maven coordinates:

com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-http-java11

telemetry-http-okhttp

This is an implementation of the required http client interface using okhttp as the underlying library. The telemetry-http-okhttp library is published under the maven coordinates:

com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-http-okhttp

telemetry_examples

Example code for using the metrics and telemetry APIs.

integration_test

Integration test module. Uses docker-compose based tests to test the SDK end-to-end.

Retries

As described here, the TelemetryClient makes use of a default backoff strategy when it encounters data ingest errors. Specifically, this strategy tries again after 1 second, then doubles the wait after each attempt until a max wait of 15 seconds is reached. After 10 failed attempts, data is dropped and a message is logged.

The backoff strategy is not currently pluggable. Please file an issue or submit a pull request if you need greater control over this behavior.

Contribute

We encourage your contributions to improve New Relic Java Telemetry SDK! Keep in mind that when you submit your pull request, you'll need to sign the CLA via the click-through using CLA-Assistant. You only have to sign the CLA one time per project.

If you have any questions, or to execute our corporate CLA (which is required if your contribution is on behalf of a company), drop us an email at opensource@newrelic.com.

A note about vulnerabilities

As noted in our security policy, New Relic is committed to the privacy and security of our customers and their data. We believe that providing coordinated disclosure by security researchers and engaging with the security community are important means to achieve our security goals.

If you believe you have found a security vulnerability in this project or any of New Relic's products or websites, we welcome and greatly appreciate you reporting it to New Relic through HackerOne.

If you would like to contribute to this project, review these guidelines.

To all contributors, we thank you! Without your contribution, this project would not be what it is today. We also host a community project page dedicated to New Relic Telemetry SDK (Java).

Release Process

Publish to Staging Repo

To stage the release:

1. Create a branch titled _release_branch (e.g. 0.6.0_release_branch)
2. Submit and merge a PR to update the build.gradle.kts file with the version to be released (e.g. version := "0.6.0").
3. From Github releases, create a release and set the tag like v0.6.0 and set the branch to the release branch. You'll fill in the release notes after release.
4. Publish the release to Sonatype and this will run the publish release job.

Results of the job can be viewed here.

After the release job has run successfully it will publish the new artifact to a staging repository on Sonatype at: https://oss.sonatype.org/#stagingRepositories.

Manually Release Staging Repo

1. Find the staging repo on Sonatype, which should be named similar to comnewrelic-nnnn, and validate that the contents and version look correct.
2. If the contents look correct, select the staging repo and choose close, leaving a comment such as releasing 0.6.0.
3. When the staging repo is finished closing, select the staging repo and choose release, keeping the Automatically Drop checkbox checked, and leave a comment such as releasing 0.6.0.
4. Verify that the artifacts were published on Maven Central at: https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/newrelic/telemetry/telemetry

Post Release

1. Submit and merge a PR with the following:

• Update the build.gradle.kts file with to a version of a potential future release (e.g. version := "0.7.0").
• Update the CHANGELOG with details of the new release:

  ## [0.6.0]
  - Miscellaneous bug fixes and tweaks

• Update the Usage example in the README with the newly released version (e.g. implementation("com.newrelic.telemetry:telemetry-core:0.6.0")).

2. Update the release notes with the changelog details.

Limitations

The New Relic Telemetry APIs are rate limited. Please reference the documentation for New Relic Metric API and New Relic Trace API requirements and limits on the specifics of the rate limits.

License

The New Relic Java Telemetry SDK is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.

The New Relic Java Telemetry SDK also uses source code from third party libraries. Full details on which libraries are used and the terms under which they are licensed can be found in the third party notices document.