Monitoring your Foxx applications

    How to integrate a Foxx application into a monitoring system using the plugin.

    Solution

    Since Foxx native tongue is JSON, integrating it with the should be an easy exercise. We have a Foxx-Application which can receive Data and write it into a collection. We specify an easy input Model:

    1. /** Creates a new FirstCollection
    2.  *
    3.  * Creates a new FirstCollection-Item. The information has to be in the
    4.  * requestBody.
    5.  */
    6. controller.post('/firstCollection', function (req, res) {
    7.   var firstCollection = req.params('firstCollection');
    8.   firstCollection.attributes.Date = Date.now();
    9.   res.json(FirstCollection_repo.save(firstCollection).forClient());
    10. }).bodyParam('firstCollection', {
    11.   description: 'The FirstCollection you want to create',
    12.   type: FirstCollection
    13. });

    Which we may do using cURL:

    We’d expect the value to be in the range of 1 to 5. Maybe the source of this data is a web-poll or something similar.

    1. /**
    2.  * we use a group-by construct to get the values:
    3.  */
    4. var db = require('org/arangodb').db;
    5. var searchQuery = 'FOR x IN @@collection FILTER x.Date >= @until collect value=x.value with count into counter RETURN {[[CONCAT("choice", value)] : counter }';
    7.   res.json(
    8.     db._query(searchQuery, {
    9.       '@collection': FirstCollection_repo.collection.name(),
    10.       'until': until
    11.     }).toArray()
    12.   );
    13. }).pathParam('nSeconds', {
    14.   description: 'look up to n Seconds into the past',
    15.   type: joi.string().required()
    16. });

    We inspect the return document using curl and jq for nice formatting:

    We have to design the return values in a way that collectd’s config syntax can simply grab it. This Route returns an object with flat key values where keys may range from 0 to 5. We create a simple collectd configuration in /etc/collectd/collectd.conf.d/foxx_simple.conf that matches our API:

    1. # Load the plug-in:
    2. LoadPlugin curl_json
    3. # we need to use our own types to generate individual names for our gauges:
    4. TypesDB "/etc/collectd/collectd.conf.d/foxx_simple_types.db"
    5. <Plugin curl_json>
    6.   # Adjust the URL so collectd can reach your arangod:
    7.   <URL "http://localhost:8529/_db/_system/collectable_foxx/data/firstCollection/firstCollection/lastSeconds/10">
    8.    # Set your authentication to Aardvark here:
    9.    # User "foo"
    11.        Type "the_values"
    12.      </Key>
    13.     <Key "choice1">
    14.        Type "first_values"
    15.      </Key>
    16.     <Key "choice2">
    17.        Type "second_values"
    18.      </Key>
    19.     <Key "choice3">
    20.        Type "third_values"
    21.      </Key>
    22.     <Key "choice4">
    23.        Type "fourth_values"
    24.      </Key>
    25.     <Key "choice5">
    26.        Type "fifth_values"
    27.      </Key>
    28.   </URL>
    29. </Plugin>