Apollo GraphQL App Insights Configuration

(~7 minutes) Instructions for adding Azure Monitor - App Insights logging to Apollo GraphQL

Initialize App Insights and Import Types

Add App Insights to the data-access project:

In terminal go to azure-quickstart/data-access and issue the following command:

npm install applicationinsights

Add "APPINSIGHTS_INSTRUMENTATIONKEY" to your localsettings.json with the Instrumentation Key from application insights

Instrumentation Key: In Azure: Go to the Application Insights resource named sharethrift. The Instrumental key will be under essentials.

azure-quickstart/data-access/localsettings.json

{
  ...
  "Values": {
    ...
    "APPINSIGHTS_INSTRUMENTATIONKEY": "<<Your Key Here>>"
    ...
  }
  ...
}

Add the following to the top of the index.ts to initialize the App Insights client as early as possible and to import the types needed for the plugin. Note in the configuration we've defined a custom property of "functionArea" to help organize our logs and make them easier to query.

azure-quickstart/data-access/graphql/index.ts

let appInsights = require("applicationinsights");
appInsights.setup().start();
appInsights.defaultClient.commonProperties = {
  environment: process.env.WEBSITE_HOSTNAME,
  functionArea: "graphql"
};
let appInsightsClient = appInsights.defaultClient;

import {
  ApolloServerPlugin,
  GraphQLRequestContext,
  GraphQLRequestListener,
} from 'apollo-server-plugin-base';

Define the Apollo Plugin

This plugin logs some valuable information:

• Metrics: apollo-query / apollo-error

  • Quickly see the volume of queries / errors in Azure Monitor

• Exceptions:

  • Track down details of errors through Azure Log Analytics

azure-quickstart/data-access/graphql/index.ts

// referenced from https://jeffmagnusson.com/post/graphql-apollo-server-plugins-in-typescript
const appInsightsPlugin = <ApolloServerPlugin & GraphQLRequestListener>{

  // Fires whenever a GraphQL request is received from a client.
 requestDidStart(requestContext:GraphQLRequestContext): GraphQLRequestListener | void{
    appInsightsClient.trackMetric({name: "apollo-query", value: 1});
    return this;
  },
  // Fires for graph exceptions
  didEncounterErrors: function(requestContext:GraphQLRequestContext) {
    appInsightsClient.trackMetric({name: "apollo-error", value: 1});
    appInsightsClient.trackException({exception: new Error("Apollo Error")});
    appInsightsClient.trackException({exception: {category:"Apollo Error", details: requestContext.errors}});
  }
  
}

Add the plugin to Apollo Server

azure-quickstart/data-access/graphql/index.ts

const server = new ApolloServer({
  ...
  plugins: [
    appInsightsPlugin
  ],
  ...
});

Resources:

• GraphQL Apollo Server Plugins in Typescript

• Principled GraphQL - Structured Logging