Java

How to send metrics using Java

Contents

• Java

  • Interesting Java Metrics Libraries

  • Java DNS Behaviour

  • Sending a metric via TCP

  • Sending a metric via UDP

  • Sending a metric via HTTP POST

  • Google App Engine HTTP Post

Interesting Java Metrics Libraries

• Coda Hale’s metrics library

  http://metrics.dropwizard.io/ - Developed by Yammer to instrument their JVM-based backend services, it’s a really comprehensive Java metrics library and works well with Hosted Graphite.

• Metrics-StatsD for Coda Hale’s metrics library

Java DNS Behaviour

Java’s default JVM behaviour includes an optimisation/attempt to prevent DNS cache poisoning whereby it will read DNS entries for a service and then cache them forever. This is something that will result in problems with Hosted Graphite.

To service our hundreds of customers we run a lot of different machines and we swap machines in and out all the time. This means that if you have cached the DNS entry for a machine that no longer exists, you’re going to drop a lot of data.

To prevent this, you can set the JVM cache behaviour to only cache entries for 60 seconds:

java.security.Security.setProperty("networkaddress.cache.ttl" , "60");

Sending a metric via TCP

import java.io.DataOutputStream;
import java.net.Socket;

...
Socket conn          = new Socket("YOUR-UID.carbon.hostedgraphite.com", 2003);
DataOutputStream dos = new DataOutputStream(conn.getOutputStream());
dos.writeBytes("YOUR-API-KEY.foo.java-tcp 1.2\n");
conn.close();

Sending a metric via UDP

import java.net.DatagramSocket;
import java.net.DatagramPacket;
import java.net.InetAddress;

...
DatagramSocket sock   = new DatagramSocket();
InetAddress addr      = InetAddress.getByName("YOUR-UID.carbon.hostedgraphite.com");
byte[] message        = "YOUR-API-KEY.foo.java-udp 1.2\n".getBytes();
DatagramPacket packet = new DatagramPacket(message, message.length, addr, 2003);
sock.send(packet);
sock.close();

Sending a metric via HTTP POST

import java.util.Base64;
import javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection;
import java.io.*;
import java.net.URL;

// Assumes the reader will try/catch the appropriate exceptions, and clean up
// The connection when they're done with it!

String data = "foo.java-http 1.2";
URL url     = new URL("https://www.hostedgraphite.com/api/v1/sink");
HttpsURLConnection connection = (HttpsURLConnection)url.openConnection();

String key        = "YOUR_API_KEY";
String authHeader = Base64.getEncoder().encodeToString(key.getBytes());

connection.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + authHeader);
connection.setRequestMethod("POST");
connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Length", String.valueOf(data.getBytes().length));
connection.setUseCaches (false);
connection.setDoInput(true);
connection.setDoOutput(true);

OutputStream wr = connection.getOutputStream();
wr.write(data.getBytes("UTF-8"));
wr.flush();
wr.close();

Google App Engine HTTP Post

URLFetchService fetcher= URLFetchServiceFactory.getURLFetchService();
String data = "foo 1.2";
String key  = "YOUR_API_KEY";

String authHeaderString = "Basic " + Base64.encodeBase64String(key).getBytes("ISO-8859-1");
HTTPHeader authHeader   = new HTTPHeader("Authorization", authHeaderString);

HTTPRequest request = new HTTPRequest("https://www.hostedgraphite.com/api/v1/sink", HTTPMethod.POST);
request.getFetchOptions().setDeadline(10);
request.setHeader(authHeader);

request.setPayload(data.getBytes());
HTTPResponse response = fetcher.fetch(request);

Your API key can be found on your account home page.