9. Boosting Transaction Trace Rates With Tracepoints Using the Command-Line Tool

Overview

In chapter 6, we learned how to create Tracepoints using the web UI. In this chapter, we are going to follow on from chapter 6 and learn how to create Tracepoints using the Tideways command-line tool.

While the web UI can be quite handy, the command-line may be more flexible, as it allows for Tracepoints to be created in an automated way. It may not be something which is immediately necessary for you, but should it be so at some point in the future, it’s handy to know how to do so.

If you have not already installed the Tideways command-line tool, check out chapter 8 for how to do so, along with an overview on the tool’s functionality. When you’re finished, and have it installed, come back and continue reading.

To create a Tracepoint from the command line, you use the Tideways command-line tool’s tracepoint create command, passing to it the application and transaction for which you want to boost the transaction trace rate, along with any flags which you want to set.

tideways tracepoint create <application> <transaction> [options] [flags]

Command Options

The tracepoint create command supports a number of flags, which you can find by running the following command:

tideways tracepoint create --help

You can see them in the table below.

Argument Optional/Required Description

--disable-notification

optional

Disable the summary notification to your personal e-mail.

-d,
--duration-minutes

optional

Duration in minutes the boost runs for. The minimum duration is 10 minutes and the maximum duration depends on your license. The default is 60 minutes.

-e,
--environment

optional

The environment which the Tracepoint is active on. The default is production.

--http-code

optional

The Tracepoint collects a trace if the HTTP status code matches the given code.

--http-host

optional

The Tracepoint collects a trace if the HTTP host matches the given value.

--http-method

optional

The Tracepoint collects a trace if the HTTP method is a match to the configured value.

--http-url

optional

The Tracepoint collects a trace if the HTTP URL matches the given value.

-t,
--min-response-time-ms

optional

The Tracepoint only collects a trace if the minimum response time specified (in milliseconds) is exceeded.

-s,
--service

optional

The service that the Tracepoint is active on.

Basic Example

With the introduction and overview out of the way, let’s now step through an example. This one will set demo/symfony-sylius as the application and sylius.controller.product:indexAction as the transaction.

tideways tracepoint create "demo/symfony-sylius" "sylius.controller.product::indexAction"

After running the command, you should see output similar to the following:

New tracepoint create created!

It can take a few minutes until the tracepoint configuration is synchronized to all active servers.
You can then see traces collected for this tracepoint inside Tideways:

   Summary: https://app.tideways.io/o/demo/symfony-sylius/traces/boosts
   Traces: https://app.tideways.io/o/demo/symfony-sylius/traces?cid=16d0d113-2a73-4325-b1a8-72ee6789bb83

More Advanced Example

Now, let’s work through a second, more advanced, example. This time the example will create the same Tracepoint as the one which we created in chapter 6, using the Configure Tracepoint to Boost Traces form. To do that it will use the following flags:

Flag Setting

--duration-minutes

60

--environment

production

--http-code

500

--http-method

GET

--min-response-time-ms

500

--service

web

 
tideways tracepoint create "demo/symfony-sylius" \
    "sylius.controller.product::indexAction" \
    --duration-minutes 60 \
    --environment "production" \
    --min-response-time-ms 500 \
    --http-code 404 \
    --http-method "GET" \
    --service "web"

In Summary

And that is how to use the Tideways command-line tool to boost transaction trace rates with a Tracepoint. If you want to know more about the command-line tool, then check out the Tideways CLI. Otherwise, if you would like more information about boosting traces, then check out Boosting Traces section of the Tideways documentation.

Still need help? Email [email protected]